Transient Beings
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: Hints of slash. In Israel, a mysterious coffin with obscenely advanced technology is uncovered. Alucard's obsession for a decent adversary and a certain dhampir leads him to disobedience. A story of death and passion. Vampire Hunter D Hellsing Xover
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes:** Oh, hey, lookie! I'm doing a crossover. Dear God. Okay. This may be the most ridiculous story I've ever written, or it might be something I can easily pull off (or pull out of my ass). Please don't sue. Disclaimer: This story, while told by me, has characters that belong to someone else; there are some real locations, like Israel briefly mentioned in the beginning, but everything else belongs to Hideyuki and the guy who wrote Hellsing. Oh, and another thing: I've fixed the issue with the words getting muddled. Wordpad seems to hate my soul right now.

**UNTITLED VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER **  
**TAKE 1** : HEINOUS DISOBEDIENCE

_Israel._

_Palestinians and Israelis, Christians, Muslims. Every religion in the world clawing out each other's eyes in order to claim this worthless spit of blood-soaked earth, and none of them the closer. What an aroma that fills the air! They say there has been more blood spilled on this earth than anywhere else on Earth. They say more wars were fought, more lives torn apart like quickened flesh. I can still _smell_ the decay. I can hear the hoarse, distant cries of foreign languages echoing in discordant agony and terror. I remember a time when this land was pure. Hell, even I have a hard time remembering those years._

_Oh, don't get me wrong. I am not a historian. I am not immortal, for there is no such thing as true immortality, the fount of eternal life doesn't exist, and you are going to die someday. Just like me. I am just a vampire! No ordinary vampire will do for this story, of course. I am Alucard, Hellsing Organization's top soldier, the No-Life King, once-Count-- but I get ahead of myself. _

_Vampires, ghouls, beware all! Death gives you kisses from the tips of my bullets, and they wish you goodnight and farewell._

--------------

The chopper buzzed like an enormous beetle over ale-colored sands. The heat alone was enough to make a man lose three pounds after a single day sweating it out in the unbearable elements. Bits of sand, the smell of gasoline, camels, and sweat flowed Luckily, the British transport with Hellsing's insignia was a neutral party and no one would be forced to hike the distance to their target: a recently uncovered tomb whose concents were... undoubtedly vampiric.

"A sarcophagus," a deep, meditative voice purred as he lounged in the darkness, nursing a juice pouch filled with brilliant red drink. "Buried in sand, forgotten... I wonder who it might be." A thin, twisted smile curved his mouth into a fanged scythe shape. When he laughed, nobody heard; the propellers were much too loud.

-------------

"Alucard!"

"Yes, master."

"You will find this sarcaphagus, uncover it, and no matter what is inside... you will destroy it without fail. I don't trust what's within that container, rumored to be some withered, ancient being."

"Yes, master. Of course." _What are you so afraid of, hmm? That there may finally be something stronger than I?_

"You will be accompanying Walter on this mission to Israel, so that if need be, you'll have back-up. I don't like sending you so far away without supervision, but in this instance it is beyond my hands. The Queen has commanded it."

_If so, why are you afraid?_

"Don't contradict me! Trust me in this, Alucard. This is something that must be done, and I won't have it if there is a problem where no one else can reach you."

"Very well. Hm-hm...but, Integra..."

Alucard, poised for a siesta with the fine, tailored leather jacket that was his gift from Walter several years ago draped around him like open wings, rose from the chair. There he stood counter to her oh-so-proper, vigilante and regal posture. Of her face, he could see naught but the light shine on her glasses and the slow, pensive coal-red burn of her cigar. He noted with some displeasure how the sweet stink of it filled his hallowed little basement home.

Integra stared at him impassively. Her mouth stiffened into a tight line, sucking furiously at the cigar before smoke cascaded from her nose in a glorious grey plume.

"You just have to trust me... as you have always done, hm? It has been so long since I've gone on a day trip, do you think I would be so reckless as to let myself be destroyed by some weak, wrinkled old fart?" His words didn't present themselves at a voice, but as a purr that sent ripples through Integra's body. She touched her finger to the bridge of her glasses to push them up when, silently, a hand gloved in white appeared before her eyes and gently stole the cigar from her lips. "Will you not smoke these in my chambers? Tsk. You humans, so set in your self-destructive ways..."

"Alucard," Integra Hellsing warned, bristling vaguely as the intrusion to her personal space rattled her nerves. "You will not speak to me that way again, as long as I promise not to smoke in here."

He laughed at her expense, quietly revelling in her disgruntled state as he walked past her and up the stairs. Vaguely he thought whether this wasn't just a field trip for his benefit or a mission to take a little more seriously. And what reason did Integra have for sending him with Walter, not Police Girl? "I don't need help - even from the Angel of Death himself. But, if it is your wish--"

_But I wonder... Are you worried because you know something?_

An interesting means to an end - maybe not quite. Maybe this would be more than a walk in the desert.

_--------------------_

The tomb had been uncovered for who knew how long. The centuries seemed compressed, giving everything the dry, cracked, old, decaying smell of stone - of microorganisms long deceased and fallen to dust. But the "sarcophagus" that his master and the file she provided had vaguely detailed was nothing like the time-eaten marble or stone. Walter's footsteps made dirt trickle down beaten, barely discernable steps into the stuffy gloom.

The Midian stopped briefly and sniffed briefly. "Ah... Walter. You mustn't breathe this air. Men have died in it. Perhaps you should wait here, hm? Who knows how long an old man would last?"

"Very well. But I will not hesitate to come to your aid. Master Integra has ordered me to be your helper, after all." Walter smiled, and retreated back the steps into the night.

The thing in the center of a stone, circular pedestal - that was made of old stone, at least - was made of metal. It was completely solid, decored with embellished archaic runes that were beyond Alucard's immediate knowledge. Alucard wrinkled his nose. It was warm to the touch, and smooth like new chrome. It had a strange smell, aside from the stagnant poisonous air.

He was not altogether surprised when the earth shuddered under his feet, and a beastly claw reached for his dust-layered boot. Nonplussed, he eyeballed the scaly, muscle-bound arm with a disparaging sneer. In the blur of motion that followed, the arm was severed at the elbow, revealing bone and gore, blood spraying across the clean, mirror-like surface of the unearthly coffin. As he fired shots, the stone floor all around him exploded as legions of ghouls wormed and crawled over each other to avenge their fallen comrade.

Bullets rained down from apparently every direction imaginable, rending bloody, enormous holes in the corpses that rose to animation around the coffin. They were as energetic as wind-up dolls. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Somehow this felt less than manufactured. These weaklings could not be the work of some great vampire; they almost willingly put themselves in the paths of his bullets. It was pathetic! Was he reduced to this? A bored, miserable, angry vampire with no challenges to look forward to, no glorious night-long battles that would end in blood-soaked joy?

It was outrageously insulting, the way these creatures collapsed in the rapture of death.

When all was done, and the earth was muddy with ichor, the unappeased vampire gazed on the coffin with little more than scorn. "Pathetic," he laughed. "If you yet live, is that all you have to offer me? You have insulted me beyond reckoning! Now, stop hiding in that heap, and reveal yourse--"

A hissing breath, like a deep exhalation, rose from the coffin. Suddenly, seams that were hidden before appeared in a crosswise pattern. The metal groaned, the four seperate pieces moving sedately in tandem, moving to fall parallel to the coffin. Alucard noted the ichor slowly gliding as one toward the gaping blackness within the coffin. He was about to level his firearm at it before there was suddenly light.

Light poured out of the coffin, illuminating the sparkling treasure that had nothing to do with the coffin at all. Alucard knew that because he had never seen the kind of technology that was keeping this being alive. The parsley treasures around the coffin were from some forgotten era he cared nothing about. Despite the extensive technology used to keep him "alive", the creature with the coffin was so emaciated as to look skeletal.

There were tubes jammed in to dramatically reduced flesh, though judging from careful listening there was a pulse, weak and pathetic that belied the deep, bellowing throb of power that raced through the creature's withered body. What caught Alucard's attention most was the mane of lustrous dark hair that flowed past the creature's shoulders. Despite the macabre discovery, he thought how lovely it must be to die with such locks.

His communicator blipped. "Alucard," Walter's voice buzzed near his ear. "What have you found?"

"Whatever it is," Alucard replied cheerfully, "it will die as my master has commanded."

But, glaring as he did down the barrel of his gun, he sensed the power straining against the mortal coil. His gaze glided to the blue necklace around the vampire's throat. The ocean blue gem sparkled at him, smoothed to perfection. The great familiarity did not strike him as notable.

"Walter?" Alucard growled. "Please call my Master. This is no ancient coffin, besides, and this vampire is nearly spent. Perhaps we can add another monster to the master's collection."

"If you'll remember," Walter reminded stiffly, "you were the one who turned Miss Victoria at the start."

"But this time, I'll have my master's permission." Alucard's wicked smile disappeared behind his glove, as he raised his hand to shut off the communicator hooked into his jacket collar. This little theory of permission of his was going to get him into so much wonderful trouble, he realized with some glee.

"So," he sighed, addressing the pale death inside the coffin. He noted the long curve of a sword in its sheath at the man's side, elegant but lethal. "Your strength has saved you, even at the hour of thy death. How poetic. But this act of mercy is not meant to save you. I merely want to bring you back to your full strength. I'll have my glorious battle, at the behest of my master. In an arena of blood, you'll fall by my guns... there's nothing you or I can do about it. It is my life to kill my own kind, and so I shall... till the end of days!"

He bent over the metal coffin and tore the entire construct from the floor. It wasn't that hard. It was not even connected to it. He dragged the entire thing from the room, up the stairs, to greet the hot and terrible night as Walter moved toward him. Alucard heaved the coffin once he was in the fresh air, breathed deeply, and swung the coffin onto the chopper bed.

"Doesn't that weigh a lot?" Walter noted, dubiously calculating its density.

"I don't know what it's made of, but it doesn't seem to hurt him so it shouldn't hurt me. Tell my master that I'm taking him home with me." He relaxed, sitting on the edge of the coffin as if doing so made it his, claimed as his own desert prize. "Hm-hm... This should prove a headache to her, but I will apologize as much as necessary."

--------------------

It was like a long, gasping breath filled with night. A constant inhalation of eternity, relentless, ventilating in one direction. There was no body, no being. No physical case into which his life was carefully wrapped. His flesh was a mere vessel, and in it he was hibernating, waiting for his power to reanimate the sinew and matriced bone within. Then, all in one shuddering go, it changed; his rib cage (yes, that's what it was called). It was as if the movement changed, just that there suddenly was movement. A rhythm borne of desperation made his lungs suck in the hot, desert air; his heart that beat maybe once every hour began to strain and beat, flooding his veins with fluid.

His mind beat repeatedly against his sanity, crying for life, for thoughts and ideas and sensory input. It beat so hard that he had a migraine. He refused to open his eyelids, even when his muscles began to twitch and spasm uncontrollably.

It was excruciating. His nerve-endings fired. The first message was pain. Life was pain, and it was a never-ending cyclical agony for him to live. But he had no voice to scream yet, and that, at least, was a blessing in and of itself, or he would have screamed himself raw.

-------------------

Sirens howled. An emergency system had somehow gone off, sensing the abnormal energy polarity around the coffin. Integra must have triggered the alarms when she discovered that Alucard meant to return with the creature still intact and possibly alive and dangerous. The large reinforced van was still idling outside, the back doors open and swinging in the wind, empty. Walter was shouting something but none of the people could hear a word of his urgent message.

In the meantime, a red blur with a huge metal box fixated onto his back darted through the hallways. His power drained, he ceased his running and shoved the entire coffin through a doorway into a medical facility. Metal shrieked on marble tiles and halted at a twenty degree angle to the far wall. The red-jacketed Alucard rose and smiled insanely at his handiwork. Soon there would be people to see to this creature's natural - and supernatural - needs. He would beg for his master's acceptance. This was of the utmost priority, the only priority he had for the time being. He never wanted anything so badly than to fight to the death with something that could hold its own for more than five or six minutes.

Integra Hellsing marched herself with Walter by her side, wincing around the sound of the alarms until some fool had the sense to shut them off. Mid-sentence, her words reached his ears. "--card, what in BLOODY hell do you think you're doing, blazing through my corridors with that thing?" How beautiful she looked - a fiery demon with slightly disoriented hair, her suit pressed, glasses shining in the clinical white lights shining from the exam room.

"You had orders. Orders to kill whatever was in there, orders to destroy it without fail. You have committed more than failure, but this heinous disobedience! This is... this is utterly reprehensible, Alucard!"

Even Walter was not prepared for it - the resounding smack of human knuckles on immortal skin. She was lucky not to have broken her hand. Her eyes continued to burn holes like cigarettes into the stunned vampire's face. But there came the slow smile, creeping back like fetid water. "Master," he purred, lowering himself to the floor, his jacket pooled like blood around him. "You are highly displeased."

Integra's response hung from the tip of her tongue. Her mannishly tall frame quivered, that aching human weakness preventing her from striking out again. Her breath came in hard little pants.

The vampire sighed as if enraptured. "Punish me, Master, if it will please you... and don't you dare hold back."

Sir Integra shivered, as if his words puzzled and horrified her. "Go to your room," she whispered breathlessly.

"So you won't kill him?" Alucard murmured. "Thank you... Master."

"I'll see to this situation myself and speak with you later. Privately. Bloody vampire!"

Walter was looking painfully to Integra for permission. "Shall I call the them in?"

"Who?" Integra muttered, rubbing her temples as Alucard raised himself off the floor and disappeared around the corner to find his room.

"The physicians, Sir Integra." Walter stepped quickly into the exam room. "The, ah, specimen appears to be waking up."

"Bloody hell. Get the damn physicians. And make sure to check on Alucard. This is unprecedented behavior, even coming from him." Integra's voice lowered into an angry tenor, the words bouncing off the walls and following Alucard even as he descended into his chambers.

But she could not deny her curiousity. Her footsteps led her into the room. In the glaring lights, the creature in the coffin, clad in black, was even now slowly reanimating. It was slow, and agonizing, and she could almost hear the pain in every event that caused it life. Her eyes fixated on the blue gem fastened around its throat hanging from a chain. She looked at the sword by its side, and the beautiful head of nearly black hair framing the skeletal face that was becoming more and more handsome before her very eyes.

What was the reason that Alucard would have dragged this being here before her? Alucard rarely did anything without cause. Was he trying to tell her something? Was he_ lonely_? But he had Seras Victoria. The Police Girl, as he affectionately taunted her. Her mind fumbled, but soon she became too caught up in the way the man's body before her ate up the years to restore his youth. He was beautiful. His muscles were finely chiseled, his body tall and powerful, radiating its own bizarre sense of beauty. He had the look of a starved young man no more than eighteen years old.

"Sir Integra," Walter ventured. "We'd best let them put him on a blood transfusion. He will wake up... very dangerous if he is hungry."

"He will be dangerous no matter what we do, Walter." She lifted the sword quietly from the coffin. The sheath was riddled with bits and chunks missing out of it, made of some sort of hide. Deep scratches, grooves, and bite marks covered it. She passed it to Walter, who would take it to their investigation lab for analyzation. In the meantime, she stepped out into the corridor and stubbornly lit another cigar, champing down on the end of it with a ferocious intent. _Damn it. Who is this? Why have you brought him all the way here?_


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** Anyone who can help me come up with a possible title for this story within the next couple of chapters wins a free smut fic, starring Alucard and one other person!! Any takers? ... I kid, I joke. Seriously, though. A title? ANYONE? Oh! And I'd love to thank all the reviewers that just shocked the hell outta me this morning, seeing so many happy comments! I know I'll fix the first chapter at some point. Somehow some paragraphs got fuddled. I knew I was smart to list this fic under "Hellsing" this time. I hope I don't disappoint with this following chapter (As yet actionless - which includes guns and swords and other things.)

**UNTITLED VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 2 **: Savage Wonders

The perfume of life, pure and unhampered, assaulted his senses. It made his muscles ache, his tongue melt to taste the air like a serpent. But years of life had taught him to resist this evil, this temptation. It was the unnatural thirst for blood, and even though it was near enough to make him swoon, he let the scent of it make him cold. He had to tell himself of his hatred. He convinced his body that it was poison. But his body was telling him, Ah, but how can it be poison when it is yet flowing into his body through other means?

His eyes snapped open at this notion. He sensed it, a strange warm prickling at his elbow joint of his left arm. He was gazing into a light, stabbing rainbows into his eyes until he blinked them away. What was this new evil? Memories that were once firmly erected in his mind tumbled apart; he saw himself standing before the coffin he must have been laying in before. He felt the familiarity of the scenery, of the woman he spoke with, who gently propelled him into the coffin and stroked his brow as he closed his eyes for the centuries to come. But where this was on the Frontier, how he got there, all of that was lost to the coma.

An ocean of blank emptiness lie between that particular moment and where he stood upon the distant shore of the present. It was then he felt a presence. The voice of that presence soon followed. "Awake, and _so_ soon..."

He blinked past the lights, which were slowly dimmed to a bearable level, at the figure swaying beyond his weakened vision. It was unthinkable that what he was looking at could possibly be...

"Nobility," he hissed. His left hand convulsed in response to the strong desire to cut him down where he stood, but it was just as feeble as the voice he spoke with.

"That's an interesting term. I hope the respect was intended." A disquieting, malevolent laughter bounced from the four walls. D found himself drowning in it, his head throbbing in time. He desperately wanted to know where he was.

The answer: "Hellsing Organization, London Headquarters. To be more specific, you're in our modest hospital wing, being fed properly through a tube since you apparently refuse anything living." At this, the stranger sounded puzzled, if not downright annoyed. "But you must have your rest."

"Who are you?" D demanded, fixing his cold blue gaze at the figure. The broad, crimson hat and dark straight hair kept much of the man's face out of view. A pair of orange shades covered his eyes, which stood little to shield his eyes from revealing their tell-tale redness.

"I am Alucard. My, how your strength returns! Hmm!" Thus named, Alucard gave a little tremor of excitement and approached the other man, reaching for his throat. D tensed for action, but Alucard had already grabbed the blue jewel around his throat and stared into it. He dropped it back to his chest with a chuckle. "I'm getting excited already. I should leave before I do something regrettable." He fixed his hot, sultry crimson gaze on the other man's face and simply sneered, fangs protruding against his lower lip. "Rest, handsome brother, for when you rise again, you will die a proper warrior's death. I pray you won't be a disappointment. You won't even feed yourself; what sort of hope should I hold that you'll prove a threat against the No-Life King?"

In the next few seconds, the Noble disappeared, leaving the room drastically empty and D calmly considering the terrible weight of this new situation.

-----------------

A few hours earlier, Alucard knelt prostrate on the floor, smiling at the ground with his hat in his hand. Integra had come as promised, and her righteous wrath poured over him deliciously in the form of silence and a gaze that rendered grown politicians to nearly wetting themselves. What a human woman she was, his master; her power over him seemed complete in its totality. She feared nothing, no one. Her eyes made his soul weep. As a vampire, she would have been utterly unstoppable... But she would rather cut her own throat and die of blood loss than let her body become tainted by the blessing of his kind.

Seras Victoria was livid before, but she too was silent. Her bright blonde hair and intelligent eyes were filled with mixed fear and disappointment. He could almost hear her deepening concern that she was no longer Alucard's favorite.

_You misunderstand me, Police Girl, _he thought quietly, awaiting his master's judgment. _I will duel that man, and what glory will befall such a sight! I can taste the power inside of him, like nothing I've ever felt before... Oh, Master... forgive me! This is like the most vain and petulant puppy love!_

Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, though she died for a cigar, sighed a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "I don't understand you, Alucard," she groaned. "Even after so many years of hunting vampires and the like, you have a mystery that eludes me."

_So much the same about you that I feel. Oh, this is far too much! _Alucard let his thoughts stay snugly trapped inside his mind. Seras Victoria's first blooding was years behind them. She could as easily poke her mind into his thoughts if he wasn't careful. He looked up slowly. "I'm not honest enough for you?"

"Hmph. You're too honest!" Integra suddenly smiled. "But this has gone far beyond the usual eccentricities. What has brought you to this kind of madness? Just tell me what the hell you've brought him here for!"

"To duel him," Alucard said simply. "To taste battle as I've never tasted it in years, to feel such excitement that has been denied me since the war with those Nazi punks. I can't tell you how long I've awaited the arrival of such a foe!"

"Do you know how many innocent lives will be at stake? At the expense of those who are innocent, you will duel a monster that could possibly destroy you?" Integra's pupils focused intently. With all pretenses aside, she was still considering for Alucard a proper punishment. His disobedience could not simply go ignored.

"Is there no greater passion?" Alucard smiled. "Master... I will not seek to harm those who would cower from the fight. This battle will take place in a place of your choosing."

"Far from it am I to allow such a proposterous--" Integra snapped, but then her eyes glistened with emotion. "I've seen him, Alucard. He... is not from our world. I don't know how or why. Surely you can sense it. While I am tempted to say I will not allow you to kill him because it's damned mad, I cannot allow such a creature to live simply because he is a vampire."

Alucard waited, smile fading as he looked to the floor again. "Command me, Master, and this time I will obey."

The Hellsing Organization's crowned leader gave a small, bitter laugh. "Truly, Alucard? I am doubtful, under the circumstances."

"How is your hand?" Alucard said suddenly, taking the opportunity to get under her skin, if only to watch her squirm.

"It's none of your concern. I shouldn't have tried to hit you." She rubbed her knuckles. They were red, not bruised. Her gaze softened as she surveyed Alucard. "Oh, get up, you bloody moron. You are permitted one visitation to your imposed guest when he wakes. But you are not to see him again, lest either of you provoke some sort of confrontation in my corridors."

_She is too kind. She knows that I can speak mind-to-mind at any time, even under my art restrictions and the restrictions imposed by this building._ He gave a quiet chuckle. "As you see fit," he simpered, giving the impression that he was subservient, which he was. He was excited about the visit, although he was not looking forward to viewing his adversary in his weakened, pathetic state.

-------------------

Meanwhile, the laboratory reserved for the process of analyzing foreign materials and their origins gave Walter some time to think during the lonely hours when he was not busy attending to Sir Integra.

To be honest with himself, he admitted that he looked forward to the lab when labwork usually bored him. He was better than that. But for all his expertise in deadly combat situations, the quiet exploration of this mysterious sword filled him with giddiness.

He could tell straight away that this was no ordinary sword. It seemed too arcane and primitive a weapon for a vampire coming to call from distant shores in a coffin that seemed altogether alien in technology. Somehow the sword fitted the stranger more than the coffin.

A delicately etched "D" on the blade chilled him slightly. The skull, the curved hand guards that looked more like demon horns. It was some kind of katana, but long enough to be a nodachi. It was approximately 95.2 centimeters in length, made of solid steel, with very minute signs of heavy use. It was finely polished and, after recieving date from the carbon dating unit, was apparently centuries old. The sheath was old and worn, showing signs of either multiple repairs or replacement.

"Lord help us," Walter choked, glancing at the sword. "If the sword should be so old... then how old is the swordsman?"

It was tradition for swords to be handed down from father to son. This character's sword must have been handed down countless times. It was the easiest explanation to believe. Highly doubtful that the swordsman could have been in possession of it for most of its life.

Alucard's voice hardly scared him. The ancient came and went as he pleased. "How is the testing coming?"

Walter lifted the sword. He swung it experimentally and found himself struggling to pull it out of the solid metal table in front of him. Alucard provided appropriate assistance; holding the blade close to his eye, he turned the cutting edge upward and gazed down the length, turning it at different angles.

"Lucky you, to spend so much time with a marvel like this." He was not a swordsman himself - or maybe he just hadn't been in centuries. Yet the Midian could appreciate the effort put through to create this weapon.

"You aren't going to break it, are you?" Walter was anxious. In the time spent to study this extraordinary piece of weaponry, he had grown quite attached to it.

Alucard snorted. "Fool, of course not." He shaved a piece of metal from the table with the sword, eyes widening from the ease with which it slid through. "Though I can assume you will value the in-put of a vampire. That this was crafted by immortal hands, there is no doubt. We are masters of such savage wonders."

"I was thinking so. It's thousands of years old."

The sword was once again on the table in its sheath. Alucard's eyes followed the curve of it, unreadable emotions flickering over his face. In a whisper, he sneered, "He probably stole it from someone while they were taking a piss."

"I wouldn't say that. I heard you visited your new friend already." Walter smiled. "What did you think of him? With every observation, he..."

"...is less likely to be the one."

"The one?" Walter quirked an eyebrow, folding his lean arms over his chest. At such an age, he was still looking well, even with artificial life extension medications.

Alucard fixed the fedora back on his head, turning to leave. "To destroy me."

_Because, don't you know... while you all strive to live, it is the business of vampire's to attain death. In every form. _ Alucard laughed as he sauntered down the hallway, a taunting laughter that reached the ears of only one: the enemy who recovered slowly in the medical wing. His greatest adversary who might just be another low-life. The anxiety wasn't exactly killing him, but it was uncomfortable for him to be wrong about anyone.

Seras Victoria was at the firing range, as expected. "Seras," he said, taking her by the shoulders. "I want you to keep an eye on my guest for me. Master says I mustn't pester him."

"You mean I've got to baby-sit Mr. Geriatric?" Disbelief and horror filled her adorable blue eyes. Normally they were red. Feeding was not a problem for her anymore, but she would ever be his little fledgling, the one who he taunted persistently for the sheer purpose of ruffling her feathers.

"Not geriatric anymore. Who knows. Maybe you can strike up conversation with him." He pushed her in the right direction. "Go away, run along now. You shoot like a drunk twelve-year-old."

"HEY!" She snarled, glaring at his back as he walked away, fading into the shadows. She put her gun down and whimpered sadly, "Why are you so mean to me...?"

"Far beneath me would it be to deny my new friend a bit of familiar company." Alucard dumped himself bodily into his 'throne', opened the cooler beside him, and drained a pint of blood. Specially ordered, harvested, cultivated from willing, anonymous doners, Alucard began to doze and while away his boredom in the darkness. The next hunt always caught him by surprise, a speck of action in an existence ordained by fate. Van Hellsing had made him into this tool. So he would remain.

He found himself cursing that he neglected to ask his guest his name. But, that scrawled "D" seemed to suit him perfectly. How simplistic. It must be horrible trying to introduce himself. Whoever he was, Alucard wished his Master hadn't taken away his right to see his guest. At least he had ways of keeping an eye on him. His licked his upper lip, closing his eyes as he recollected the sight of that beautiful creature. The pulsing power in his veins, the promise of a sweetness too great to conquer. No, he was not wrong. Couldn't be wrong!

"D," he sighed, crossing one leg over the other as he mused. "D... _D_..."


	3. Chapter 3

**UNTITLED VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 3 **: Next of Kin

Refuted reports of vampire and demon activity poured in. While Seras was not accompanying her lord and master Alucard, she was at the firing range or improving her people skills by commanding troops through training exercises. It was not really hard work; she had to contend with the unbearable libidos of every man who tended to glance below her neck and notice two very prominent things about her. She gave a sigh of exasperation which blew out as a raspberry, marching herself down to the hospital wing. Bugger it, she thought. Today was no different than the last. At least as a human, people had more decency toward her. Maybe it was some kind of natural vampiric allure...

Musings aside, she found herself straightening her spine as she wandered past the point of no return in the quiet, funereal darkness of the medical wing. Apart from treating day-to-day injuries or packing entire combat units into the examination rooms to treat war wounds, this wing was meant for swift and decisive medical action. Which meant it included rooms that could hold creatures much more than human.

This was one such room. The ex-policewoman did not even have to ask which room. It was merely a matter of which was the most heavily guarded.

Being a familiar face around the headquarters, she was quickly admitted by the armed, armored guards standing outside the doorway. The room was clean and sparkling and every bit as uncomfortable as if she were a human getting a shot.

On the bed was the most beautiful man (ranking high with her master) she had ever seen. Her fledgling heart skipped a beat, so to speak; he was already standing, gazing at her balefully with crystal blue eyes from a youthful face, smooth and white as the unsoiled moon. She swallowed heavily. "I was t-told to k-keep an eye on you," she stammered, "so you better not try anything funny!"

The other man said nothing. She realized right away that he was only dressed in the gown his examiners had provided for him. She realized Integra must have seen him totally without clothing, since she was the overseer of the examination. He was perfectly healthy, of course, but drastically weaker than normal. She tried with too much difficulty not to stare too long in one place.

"Who are you?" was the final conclusion.

"Me? I'm Seras Victoria. Alucard is my master. He saved me from a vampire priest. He had to shoot through my chest to kill the monster." The memory made her quake slightly, her hand accidently brushing over her breast to stave off the recollection of pain, terror, and nightmares.

This seemed not to surprise him at all. He was in the company of those who meant to kill him! She was impressed; he had real brass balls, this one. He asked softly, "So you kill vampires... your own kind."

"That includes you, mate," she reminded him coldly. "I mean, I'm not sure, but I'm fairly certain Alucard means to fight with you and kill you!"

The stranger slowly sat down, as if he meant to make his presence less potent by doing so. "So he tells me." There was a pause, then a gentle, "My name is D."

Seras, already unintentionally caught under his spell which was almost constantly in effect, sat down on a stool. She leaned her hands on her knees to give him her most alluring puppy-dog eyes. "Where are you from?"

"The Frontier."

"In America?" Seras wrinkled her nose; it was not a righteously popular country to be from. Seras couldn't stand Americans.

"I don't understand what you mean. The Frontier is... the Frontier. I don't know any region called 'America'." The honesty was a product of his words, not his impression on her mind. All frankness, no wordiness. Not like Alucard, who could run circles around Integra if she was not constantly on her toes.

The police girl gave him a long, quirky stare with reddened eyes, malovolency naturally injected to her stare. "You're weird," she complained inevitably. But her curiousity won again, and she asked, "So this... Frontier, then. Was it so bad you wanted to crawl into a coffin and disappear?"

Muscle twitch. In his jaw. It was barely noticable but it was noteworthy. "Yes." _But I hoped not to wake ever again... _"Now tell me, what year is it?"

"It's the twenty-first century," Seras answered quickly, blushing at his asking her questions. At least it wasn't personal, like, "Is Alucard your boyrfriend?" or something. Hell, at least he wasn't staring at her breasts. He was a perfect gentleman so far!

"I see." The information sunk in, and he seemed to diffuse his influence. His eyes grew distant and a little troubled.

Suddenly, the doors swung open slowly again, and as they closed, Integra Hellsing stood before them. Seras stood immediately. "Sir!"

D's baleful gaze switched automatically to the tall woman before him. He stood slowly, quietly, as if testing the strength of the floor in case he suddenly fell through it. The pair gazed long and hard at one another. She pushed her glasses up to her eyes further, blankly staring into the challenging gaze of the feared guest. But there was no fear in her eyes; just the cold, blank, long-lived resentment of a vampire hunter toward her quarry.

"My name is Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, leader of the Royal Order of Protestant Knights, Hellsing. I just want you to understand one thing, vampire. You are not welcome here. You are here certainly not by my choice, and not by everyone else's. I understand you've been respectful to everyone who has been treating you. This is good news; I'll have had you put down hours ago. I had the order ready to sign and all that. But just as you are a vampire, we kill them." Behind her glasses, those eyes blazed with a ferocity that impressed Seras. What impressed her even further was that it had absolutely no effect on the stranger at all.

"I understand you clearly," he replied smoothly. His voice was so beautiful, it was as clear and pure as a silver bell. "But you must understand me as well. I hunt vampires as well. I come from the future, and I am a half-breed - a dhampir."

A silence stretched out that engulfed the trio, and Walter too as he peered into the room. This skewed piece of information brought forth a slow, manic energy to the room. At first, Seras wanted to laugh out loud; Walter shook his head slowly. But Integra Hellsing, leader of her Organization, an iron fist in the world of vampire slaying - she merely nodded vaguely, not quite captured by the beauty of his voice, but entranced. A half-vampire. _Impossible. _No known vampires could produce living offspring... could they? Maybe it was like the computer-chipped vampires. But no... All the medical follow-ups insisted that he was not the pure form of a vampire. But he was older than dirt, an extremely bizarre case of vampirism. Integra was fascinated in part due to her own knowledge of vampires; everything in those reports flew in the face of everything she knew.

"Strangely enough, I believe you. Am I right to conclude that your name is D?" Her hand moved forward. It had the sword that baffled Walter and rattled Alucard's faith in D that he was who he said he was.

D nodded. A sedate relief filled the room. Integra knew what to do. Integra knew everything.

"Take this sword. I don't know what the hell Alucard wants with you, but I don't trust you enough to let you walk away from here."

"I wouldn't know where to go, Miss--"

"Sir!" Seras corrected sharply.

"--Sir Integra."

"Then stay with us. I've already set a case for Alucard and Seras to investigate. There could be aggressive negotiations involved. Join them, if you want. Alucard has my full permission to kill you if you show any signs of unmanagable behavior. There are explosives inserted into your body. They will detonate at Alucard's bidding." The sword was transferred from her possession to his. D's eyes never left her face. It was as if something about her entranced him, changed him. He looked almost as if he were... spooked. Seras had a feeling it had nothing to do with the fact that he knew there were explosives inside of him.

Anyone with that kind of information would have blanched visibly. But he simply nodded, nigh imperceptibly. "Then it appears I have no choice."

Seras gave a little smile. She was somehow looking forward to spending more time with this stranger. The sword suited him. Soon enough she would be able to see him in his full body suit. It sent a rush of heat to places that had been hot for nothing but blood for the last few years. Alucard's voice filled her head with taunts. _Damn it_, she thought. _This isn't going to be as enjoyable as I'd hoped..._

--------------

It was with great anticipation that the Midian paced the narrow space between the corridor and the parking lot. The steady scuff and clacking of his soles on the linoleum provided a staccato percussion to the other bustling noises of those readying themselves for battle. There was the van that was taking them to the target location in question infected with vampires. A Hellsing coat of arms decorated the side of the vehicle, along with the well-remembered creed. Seras and their small band of human meat-bags, as Alucard referred to them, watched and waited with similar energy.

_Alucard never acts this way before any mission._ Seras gave a little chuckle, trembling with a little excitement. Alucard looked almost sick with giddiness. Well, not particularly.

They all wanted to see him - the famous dhampir hunter - in his full regalia, despite the fact that he might not be all that Alucard hoped.

His eyes gleamed, fiery coals of bloodlust that couldn't be quenched with just any old red blood pouch. He tipped back his hat, turning mid-step to face the doorway. A pair of double-doors swung open, and the hunter advanced.

Black as midnight, as pitch, coal -- with some adjustments, his full bodysuit clinging to his muscled form like a second-skin. Plenty of his body wasn't visible due to the shadows cast by the lengthy black duster he wore, courtesy of the Hellsing tailor. A black, broad-rimmed hat not unlike Alucard's fedora, sat atop his hat, hiding the upper part of his face. His unsmiling mouth set in a thin line, he looked among the on-lookers with a blinding lack of emotion.

Alucard's eyes were for the sword on his back. That slow, lecherous grin crossed his lips. "I hope to see that blade in action, D," the vampire growled.

"It's a promise," the hunter replied calmly.

"Alright, mates! Time to move on out!" Seras shouted, pointing to the open doors. The group of supernaturals piled into the truck in the middle. Alucard, positioned across from Seras, gazed sidelong at D, who was strategically between the two, back to the driver.

"True to fact, there are vampires in a little hamlet south of a little town east of London. We've been called to eliminate the blood-sucking bastards and send them straight to Hell to purify their damned souls!" Seras informed them, confident that her words would stir up those listening on the secure radio signal of all in their tactical squad. There was a chorus of agreement from those who would fight with them. "While you guys clean up, Alucard, Mr. D, and I will take out the head vampire. Probably just another crazed bloke with a power complex, but we'll see. As usual, no straight information on the leader so we'll be, again, flyin' blind!"

As Seras settled down with a large, huge suitcase at her feet, she winked at D. "All this is not all that sophisticated compared to huntin' in the time you come from, right?"

"Actually, it's not that different. The only problem is... we hunters hunt alone. It's risky, taking so many with us."

"Which is why they're doing clean-up. Which means blasting the hell out of those cretins. We're the ones handling the tough job."

"Theirs is a job suitable for proper peons." Alucard growled. "Such paltry work is not for true slayers, such as ourselves. Isn't that right, Police Girl?"

"Yes, my master!" she barked, smiling broadly. "And besides, I dunno how many would survive getting in the way of one blast from my Harkonen!" She affectionately stroked the case at her feet. A ripple of exciement made the vampiress look exceptionally beautiful. But her eyes glazed red, her mouth curved into a bloodthirst curve of pointed teeth. The girl had suddenly become a demon, quivering in anticipation for the blood of her own kin to be spilled.

D's eyes swerved to Alucard. The Midian's glasses were off, tucked into his flamboyant scarf that doubled as a tie. When their gazes met, they clashed, and neither of them found themselves capable of tearing their eyes away. Perhaps the one was intimidated by the other. D felt the aching scars of the tiny bombs attached to his body, just as the Midian carried the responsibility of his life in his hands. "Alucard."

"D."

"Why do you want to fight me? This isn't just about being a dhampir, is it?"

"It's about death, boy," Alucard replied grandly, opening his arms even as he leaned his elbows on the backrest behind him. "We who must live on while others die! We who command to our side the demons of our past sins, and wreak havoc upon the world. Whose bastard child were you, half-blood? What forefather's sins do you carry in your pocket?" A coarse laugh followed his words, taunted by the silence of his counterpart. He seemed terrified and elated all at once. "It doesn't matter. Watch me tonight, traveler from the future. Watch me lay waste to those weeping pretenders. I'll keep an eye out for your skill. The sight of that blade makes me rather hard."

"I will," D promised. "Although I can't promise your survival, or your fledgling's. I'm not meant to be here."

"Are you not? That makes two." The No-Life King's mouth widened into a smile full of sharp, malicious teeth.

D frowned. "You can't keep me here for your entertainment."

"I think I am. Are you done whining? Perhaps it was better when you didn't speak. What a waste of a pretty voice."

The entire exchange went unnoticed. D realized with a distinct tremor of concern that time had stopped and they had somehow stepped out of the flow of time to have this conversation. Seras sat perfectly still, frozen in the process of gesturing animatedly about how good it was to finally be sent on a mission. But the river was bending back toward them and drew them along. Alucard was as still and silent as death, a shadow for eyes, smiles gone.

Time dragged on again. Their destination stank of death and the promise of bloodshed. D's eyes closed and he merely breathed a sigh of resignment.

------------

The moon seemed red for Alucard's entertainment. It seemed to balance itself on the tip of a spire atop a lone mausoleum, crafted out of stone shipped from thousands of miles away. He tipped back his hat to gaze upon it, before he walked forward. The mythological phoenix crafted of solid marble seemed eternally captured in its pose, rising from fire beneath the gaze of the moon, head reared to scream at the sky. The courtyard and surrounding garden swirled around in it; from above, it must have been a magnificent sight to see. Alucard kept that thought in mind as he gazed at the sky; his quarry could be spying on them from above even as he marked the distance from where he was to the front entrance.

D was walking around the other side of the statue, gazing with some interest at the windows - staring at a particular one, he made for the doorway.

Seras, who was in charge of leading a group of five armed mortals in through a secondary entrance, communicated through the wireless comms that there was a very sophisticated security system in place within the mausoleum. She noted to take care when opening doors and, additionally, there were security laser lines that only the sharpest of vampire eyes could notice.

"Should I toss a few smokers in there to make them clearer for you to see?" Seras asked carefully, wiping her hands on her pants before hefting the Harkonnen to shoulder-level.

"I'd rather not. Our new puppy's got the scent for us." Alucard pulled the twins from their holsters, two gigantic hand-cannons that puckered holes in solid steel. With a little finesse, he could kill with every single shot without having to change the clips. The detonator hung from around his neck within easy reach if he needed it. Somehow, watching the dhampir melt into the shadow of the mausoleum, he was not concerned for him.

D had been briefed by Seras. Recently, in this area surrounding the mausoleum, women had been disappearing from town. Their cold, bloodless bodies turned up days later in dumpsters, in rivers; everywhere except near the mausoleum. The only thing that linked the mausoleum to the killings was an old women who worked there as a cleaner for years, a keeper of the grounds that had suspicions that the new master of the house had an unnatural thirst for women.

In that respect, the information was forwarded within the day to Hellsing. An investigator returned to confirm the data. The man who had purchased the mausoleum had been a charismatic, albeit it eccentric young man with a habit for biting his knuckle when he was thinking. He wore flamboyantly-colored clothes, and often dressed in styles primarily reserved for women.

Alucard was momentarily distracted. Not all of the women had returned as dead. The key factor was that the victims were not innocents. The ones who had remained as eternal guests of their unearthly master had exited from the front windows, scattering shards of broken glass everywhere. D had disappeared completely.

The women were utterly naked and almost identical in appearance with large brown eyes and lustrous brunette hair. Their hands were claws, their little fangs bared - as if they could possibly intimidate him in the least.

They sauntered toward him, touching their breasts, moaning for murder. It was revolting.

"Ladies," he greeted, sighting them along his enormous Desert Eagles. "May God in Heaven cleanse your tainted souls! And tell him to wait for your pathetic worm of a master!" His mouth wide with a grin, his laughter rose above a roar of gunfire that filled the night amidst screams of pain and terror. Blood and gore splashed against the phoenix, staining the white cobblestone beneath his boots. A vampiress shrieked, then gurgled, as her head disappeared from her neck in the blink of an eye. It was a feast of violence for eyes too unaccustomed for death. The fanged beasts collapsed, flailing and twitching, until the blessed bullets released their souls from imprisonment. Alucard never let one of them get her hands on his body.

D watched from the shadows, until the last woman fell, then turned and proceeded cautiously into the mausoleum, whose glass ceiling glowed from the lights within.


	4. Chapter 4

**UNTITLED VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 4 **: Time Ravaged Vagrant

The feast had already been well on its way by the time Alucard manifested in the main room which served as the macabre dining room; the victims lay strewn, half-tangled in nude repose on blood-stained sheets. The mirrors stretching from floor to ceiling reflected the glittering fire of chandaliers couldn't reflect D's figure, topped with the broad-rimmed hat, as he approached the remnants of a disastrous meal. The meal of a vampire.

Alucard crossed his arms, letting the empty semi-automatic clips fall clear to the floor. The modded Desert Eagles were reloaded before they struck the ground. "Could you be any more reckless? You eat like a dog, a witless, useless piece of shit animal. What a fool!"

D's sword whispered death's promise from its sheath as it slid out into the light. His eyes were fixed on a single point amidst the ruinous Hell of torn, blood-stained sheets. The death-like figure, poised like a vulture, raised his own eyes in return. A fleeting moment passed between the three. A tension, an electrifying unity that was only broken by ties of loyalty, and Alucard broke it with a deep, maniacal chuckle.

"Can you really believe that this lower life-form hasn't tried to run away?"

_Master_, a thought interrupted him. _There's another fiend around there with you! Watch out!_

A fourth figure descended from the night stars above. The vampire's power elevated to a noticable degree; Alucard took aim and fired, heedless of the tons of glass hovering precariously above them. The new figure contorted its body into pretzel shapes to avoid the hail of bullet all howling for his blood. Instead the bullets broke apart the tenuous glass above. When it touched ground, it was immediately in motion again. It was a man with dark, cropped black hair and darkened lips, eyes as dramatic and emotionless as a painting.

Three foot shards of glass rained down from above. Alucard sneered as his attacker advanced. He was impressively swift; the Midian gave him his props by landing a single shot through one dagger the bloodsucker was wielding. The dagger shattered, but its point was its own projectile, firing with bizarre accuracy for Alucard's eye.

It pierced through; he mused over the sharp pain, the hot wetness pouring down his cheek. He puzzled over the peculiar numbness. His adversary had somehow managed to land the first hit. Oh, my.

Seras telepathically cried out for him. But Alucard merely batted her worrying cries away. As his opponent lunged toward him with that ferocious speed, he effortlessly side-stepped and cracked the butt of his Jackal against the back of his head which, to his satisfaction, made a bonedeep crunch. A shard of glass penetrated his arm, nearly severing it totally, but he still managed to swivel his opposite arm into place to fire at his shifty friend again. He was beginning to get annoyed; all this effort and the bastard was already half-dead. Why did they have to be so stubborn?

He glanced with his one good eye at the dhampir. The sight was slightly distorted due to the falling glass, which acted like fun-house mirrors, skewed lenses that made the hunter's movements appear rather dream-like. Alucard's heart ached; the other opponent was already perished, his body impaled on a silver sword in the pale moonlight. The body was then severed crotch to skull in a brilliant fountain of glistening crimson, like rubies cast into the air. He had somehow missed the entire battle; he doubted there even was one.

Brilliant, he mused with a sigh. How brilliant. Pierce my heart with that blade and I will bow down and call you... what?

With a sweep of the blade, D whipped the blood from his weapon.

Alucard danced a half-step around his opponent; he was gone one moment, behind his enemy the next, and unleashed the killing shot to the heart. He had been almost totally stationary during the ordeal. But his enemy surprised him again; the shot didn't incapacitate him long enough to prevent a desperate attempt to hurt him again. Alucard wanted to laugh at him; instead, he uttered a bored little sigh and took the dagger to the ribcage without a hitch.

"Pathetic," he started to complain again, when he saw a blinding shape, a terrible winged bird of prey descend upon him from above. He barely turned to fire when he felt a coldness wash over him - it was D, blocking the blow of yet a third vampire, whose eyes shown the keen, cunning intelligence of a older-gen vampire.

By now, Alucard's injuries were utterly gone. His gaze, coolly and unfalteringly fixed on D, waited for the next phase of battle. The man in front of them now was hardly intimidating. The last shards of glass had fallen for now, and the footsteps of the newcomer delicately crunched the bits beneath solid heels. The vampire D had killed was nothing more than an advanced body-guard. The dagger-wielding fiend was just the same. This creature of darkness seemed dressed to slaughter; four-inch thick heels, flowing, short skirt, slender-waist and slight of build with a pale white frock and dinner jacket, this - gentleman - appeared no more impressive than his advanced children.

He was most definitely a man, though beautiful enough to be a woman. The specs on the report had suggested the vampire could have been either.

D reset his stance; Alucard noted respectfully the intensity with which he stood. His whole body relaxed; underlying all that devil-may-care, such power that it made Alucard vaguely dizzy. Hmm, can't get distracted.

Seras tittered, _The head vampire? Looks like a total slag!_

Comments to yourself, Seras, Alucard droned. "That's all you have to offer me? Why don't you just push them into traffic and watch them splatter?"

"They were my best in years," the cross-dresser sighed, chewing a knuckle pensively. "A shame, a dirty shame. I want you to know you're all going to die for this. What animals you are!"

"Said one monster to another," Alucard quipped, reloading, leveling a single barrel at the fiend's heart. "Give me one reason to make this quick. Otherwise you will be dying slowly."

D stepped aside respectfully; there was no crinkling glass underneath him. Alucard smile seemed to deepen maliciously. If it was even possible, his face could only be described as festering malice sprinkled with abhorrance. Suddenly he lifted his weapon away, and recieved a sudden quiet intrusion to his mind. He realized that it was D's mind, thinking too loudly.

_Now I see with my own eyes the downfall of the Nobility. Reckless, bold, and stupid. Any Noble would have run away by now, sensing inevitable defeat. _The thoughts themselves were an unbarricaded lake of emotions and impressions. Foremost of all was sadness and a smidgen of disgust. _It's as if they're aching to throw their lives away..._

"Kill him!" Alucard hissed, trembling as the words sunk in, too close to him, close enough to make things inside of him suddenly twinge and ache. It was challenging to withhold the thoughts bursting to come free. "Kill the worthless filth! He doesn't deserve to walk the same earth as we do!"

D needed no such encouragement. If there was any hesitation, it was lost in the speed with which he moved. In five seconds, D had perforrated the vampire's body with dozens of precise, devestating sword thrusts. He cut off the fiend's retreat as he tried to escape, beheaded it, and impaled the heart again. This time, he let the body fall, crushing the skull underneath his boot.

Somehow, that cruelty did not seem to suit D's character that well at all.

He clicked his tongue, turning away to leave, even as he thought, _Would it be throwing one's life away for one last bet, one last gamble for a death well earned? I am damned beyond redemption. My only reward being the death and annihilation of scant peons such as these..._

"Master!" Seras Victoria cried in alarm, pointing urgently as she burst through a medieval doorway to his left. "Look out! It's D!"

The battle may have begun sooner than expected. No sooner had the Midian turned to spy the retreating figure of D than the recollection of Integra's voice broke my concentration. "Kill him," she had said. "And this time, you will not let him escape. Alucard, this is your last opportunity to regain my trust. If you can't do this then I might be forced to lock you away as my father did before me."

Alucard's eyes focused. He reached for the detonator dangling from his neck and toyed with it. The situation rang with promise, but he couldn't fight him NOW, it was too soon...

"MASTER!!" Seras ran ahead, poised the Harkonnen for firing. "Tell me to shoot! Master, please!" Her eyes narrowed, but she too was hesitating. Somehow that dhampir had wormed his way into her mind, filled it with doubt, with attachment. Damn him!

"Shut up, you simpering _cow_," he snarled at herm, infuriation tearing apart his kindness like tissue paper in a gale wind. His body disappeared into the floor, an inkstain in the darkness.

_Why must this rest with me? _ Alucard narrowed his eyes, put on his game face, and gave chase.

------------

A disembodied voice filled D's mind. It was not Alucard's: "So, now that we've left them a little surprise, are you sure you wanna go walking out like you are?"

"I don't seem to have any other choice. I won't assume it will be easy." He seemed to be speaking to no one in particular; anyone watching him run and talk to himself would find it awfully bizarre.

"Your crazy friend is on your tail again! He's one fast son of a bitch!"

D sheathed his sword. The mausoleum's hallways were quite simple, really. They provided another exit to the outside. He had a ridiculously huge headstart. Perhaps it was Alucard's way of toying with him, giving him false hope, before ripping it right out from under--

The dhampir threw himself to the ground, barely escaping the blazing crosshairs of automatic machine guns mounted in the walls. An entire section of wall reduced to crumbling stones. He had been reckless enough to forget about the laser sensors. His feet had crossed them and triggered the defensive response. He lay still until the whirring of guns had ceased, before launching himself to his feet. He took four steps before stopping an inch in front of a familiar face.

"Just when I'd put it below you to run away," Alucard greeted cheerfully, sliding a hand along the broken wall before letting it hang at his side. "Just when I had thought there was hope for you yet, you pull something vastly more idiotic than I'd have given you credit for. What kind of monster are you?"

D stepped back, eyeing the device grasped in Alucard's white-gloved hand. The chrome of the white Desert Eagle looked like brackish ice in the darkness. He said nothing, acknowledging his own weakness; the slumber had robbed him of much of his stamina. He was already tired. He did not say so out loud, but hated that tremble in his limbs. He would not have Alucard mistake it for fear.

"I know you're not afraid of me," Alucard answered instead, tipping his head back, thick mane of black hair framing his crazed eyes and manic smile. "Which... puzzles me. I can blow you to meaty chunks and it doesn't seem to bother you. On the other hand, I somehow doubt that a single shot from this gun can kill you. Which should I try first?"

Still D maintained his silence. His breathing evened out, quieting in the reverberating corridors of stone.

"Maybe you're counting on the fact that I wanna keep you alive. So I can fight you. Is that it?" He scratched his jaw with the detonator, puzzling it out without a care in the world.

"I removed them," D murmured suddenly. "They're in the main room under the struts. I cut them out during the battle, when you weren't paying attention."

This time, Alucard took the time to puzzle this out. What an interesting fellow. He was basically saying that if Alucard really wanted to try blowing him to meaty chunks, as he said, he ran the risk of actually blowing up Seras and everyone else who happened to be in that room. Yet at the same time, D seemed intimately confident that Alucard wouldn't dare blow up his astute, future adversary. He beat his brain against the problem, while his heart shuddered at the solution. You clever, clever little half-blood...

The Midian's crazed smile slowly relaxed. It was for his own amusement that he considered pressing the button, just to see what would happen. The bluff was working, damn it, and Alucard hated that he knew D knew it. The bastard had a devil's poker face. Not a single smile cracked that stony visage. But his musical voice seemed to want to convince him of the truth. Too bad he knew that game, the trick was his long before this punk ever sought to use it.

"Maybe it was better when you didn't speak," he repeated, harkening back to their earlier conversation. He was slowly beginning to replace the detonator to a pocket, eyeing the frozen D, whose eyes seemed to wantonly gaze directly into his own. Fool! Doesn't he know I can read him like a book that way? But the longer he stared, the more he felt himself drawn in... pulled forward by the force of his gaze. But the same seemed to work against D. His own influence, that magneticism that worked only between their own kin, drew D closer. Their ends of their hats were dreadfully close to brushing each other.

Instinctive gut-reactions really did work in a pinch. Alucard's trigger-finger seemed to be minding its own business, pulling the trigger. The crash of gunfire was startlingly deafening in that tiny space. It ripped a gigantic hole in D's left shoulder, impotently avoiding his heart. The grunt of pain surprised Alucard, thus made aware of a chink in the man's armor. Maybe he was not as impervious as he put himself out to be. The No-Life King staggered backwards; the blow D attempted had hurt him. There was a peculiar stinging, but he ignored it.

The sword was drawn a millisecond before they touched the ground. The blade itself buried an inch thick into the floor; he had missed his mark. It was nearly impossible to get a good stab in close quarters like this. Alucard effortlessly flung him upwards, slammed him into the ceiling, and took him down again, burying a volley of bullets into his body on the way.

"Down," he ordered stiffly. "You're still too weak to play in my ball game, and you're in no position to be bluffing." He sat on his bleeding chest. With a single shot, he severed the dhampir's sword hand from his arm and thus disabled him for awhile. He leaned close, while pulling him up from the floor by the lapels of his duster. A lustful, angry demon possessed his body; his heart was pounding in his ears. If he had not been so careful, D might have actually stuck that sword of his straight into his head and that would have been vastly more uncomfortable than the dagger-point.

He sank his teeth into the other's lower lip, felt the immortal flesh spring open. A gush of red sweetness burst into his mouth. He quivered, shoving the 13mm barrel underneath D's jaw as he sucked hard at the bite. He wasn't sure if it was D groaning from the experience. Blood was a conduit through which the soul could travel; he felt elation, excitement. He gained a primitive level of knowledge, a warped understanding of what D felt as he pulled at the wound. D knew sorrow and pain and beauty; Alucard's familiars were hatred, malice, pure darkness. The contrast was terrifying.

It was pure ecstacy. He would have died a hundred times to taste it all over again, to feel it all over again, and yet he would have given anything to never have done so in the first place. It seduced him so far away from reality he almost lost himself. Coarse, brutal hands were shoving against his chest. The Midian broke free, and cracked his mouth in a wide, maniacal grin. D's eyes were a smoky glass blue; blood loss was sapping his strength greatly. Alucard stroked his lips with his greedy tongue one final time before forcing him to the floor to stay.

He let himself recover, pulling himself out of the breathless, panting swoon, before he dared to contact Seras. _ I got him. Bring me a stretcher for our friend and a pint of blood for me._

The accusing red-tinted eyes of the dhampir only served to feed Alucard's amusement. His bloodied lip had healed already, his regenerative prowess impressive beyond compare. Even his hand, which had been severed at the start, had reattached itself to his arm.

"You'll get your chance," he promised, taking off his crimson fedora and threading a bloodied hand through his hair. "Our battle will come, only I will be the one to decide, little bat."

He hung back from the crowd as the black-cloaked figure was carted away on his stretcher. He sucked at a pint of blood if only to wash the taste from his mouth. The wind from an early winter storm blew back his cloak, revealing his hand which was stubbornly clutching the detonator. The crimson vampire lord gave the detonator a single glance... then it struck the ground, crushed to dust beneath his heel. His lips quivered as he grinned; it was the next act of disobedience of a long line that would lead to his final unspeakable deception. He would face Integra Hellsing's wrath when it came.

"Master," Seras called plaintively. She was probably still sore about being called a simpering cow, but it wasn't in her nature to dwell. She was his, among the only shining stars in his eternal night. She approached, cautiously; once she was within reach, he seized her around the waist and pulled her close, brutally kissing her mouth and silencing her worries. The police girl melted, eyes wide with excitement. She didn't know whether to cling tightly or let her arms hang limply.

"Don't ask me anything," he ordered her. He stroked her forehead with one digit and knew she would always obey.

"Master..." She clenched her teeth, worry etching into her very being, making her starkly beautiful. His poor, only child. She had an intuitiveness that was annoying. He bared his soul to no one, but she had those eyes of hers; those penetrating, beseeching eyes. For a moment, the once-Count wished desperately that he could tell her - tell her everything, of his tiredness, his boredom, his great and desperate desire to be done with it all.

But she, least of all, would understand.

"Little one," he soothed, in a surprising swing of kindness. "Don't you dare lose this innocence of yours."

"You... look sad." His fledgling trembled slightly, before looking down, pulling on his scarf. "N-Nevermind! We're going home, right? What about Mr. D?"

"We'll let our master worry about him for now." When that satisfied her, they walked to the van and were driven back to town. A light snow began to fall, despite that the moon was still a glowing disk in the pre-winter sky.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes: **Yes, well, I'm rather unsure about this chapter. May contain copious amounts of thinly-veiled fluff. I'm almost proud of this chapter.

**"Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 5 **: Hellsing's Hitman

D hardly needed to be seen to as a patient. Upon arrival, he was thrust into a cell with double thick steel walls with a cot, a bucket, and a sink, and one pillow. It seemed that his assistance in the matter of vampires was ill-appreciated. He was fully healed in a matter of hours. His guards were perplexed, beyond the point of understanding why their prisoner, after calmly washing the blood from himself at the sink, could so calmly lay himself down, the brim of his hat bent down over his eyes, appearing for all the world to be taking a cat nap.

Alucard was at the door, manipulating a bullet between his knuckles, narrowing his eyes through the little window at his prisoner. The Hellsing guards stank with fear; the only reason they put up with him standing there was the fat paycheck at the end of every week. They knew well that the only thing keeping Alucard from entering the room was Integra Hellsing; she alone had the power to command this monster of war, who towered over most men in every aspect of existence. It was not the guards themselves keeping him at bay, nor their guns, their physical strength.

It made Alucard something more than just a vampire whose existence was contemptible as it was intolerable. He was deified as a god of the night, proprietor of darkness, incarcerated by loyalty and respect.

"And if that is the case," he said aloud, surprising his reluctant company, "what does that make _her_?" He spirited up the image of Integra in his mind. Tall, beautiful, fearless Integra Hellsing with eyes like blue fire. Her short temper counterbalanced her swift and calculating mind; if she could not have perfection, she would do her damned best to come very near.

A crackling voice broke through the ear-pieces of D's guards. They shifted their feet, looked at Alucard, and one of them finally attempted the English language. "S-Sir Integra w-wants to see you in her room."

"Bravo," Alucard congratulated dryly, "you actually spoke a full-sentence and only stuttered twice." He turned away, capturing the eye-contact of his captive through the mesh-enforced little one-by-one-foot window. Those chilling, penetrating eyes gave him a little chill, and he could say from experience it was not a pleasant stare.

He purposefully advanced through a void of darkness. It was only dark for a moment, gripped by cold, before he saw Integra's home-away-from-home materialize around him, shapes forming from the black.

Smell of perfume. The heat was nonexistent. It was freezing in here because she hadn't thought to turn it on even though it was snowing bountifully beyond her window. Maybe because she had come in here in a hurry, in a tantrum, and simply tossed her clothes into a corner to scald her frustrations away with a hot shower.

Her favorite color was blue. Her curtains were robin's egg blue and borderline masculine in design; her walls were not blue, but paneled in a highly Grecian-style, corners and edging spiralled dramatically. Of course she had a desk, but in comparison to the one in her main office it was small and had a few miscellaneous objects; Alucard spied the bottle of perfume, which was almost empty (he amused himself by planning to acquire for her another bottle) whose scent filled the air, coating the walls and the blankets and pillows of her dark navy blue poster bed against the wall with her particular scent. An end table, a Victorian lamp, relics of the past adorning the walls, not to mention her prized little cigars, whose scent also permeated this room. A wardrobe full of suits; a dresser full of nightgowns. Pink was absolutely not in her vocabulary. Chiffon? She would sooner swallow a knife than even think of wearing it.

She had two swords crossed on the wall against the Hellsing coat of arms; he prided himself on the knowledge that they were not just for decoration. Those were the swords she used for battle, the very ones she fought with alongside Seras and himself against the vampire nazi invasion.

He walked to her desk, opening a tiny music box, letting the delicate notes play out their sweet melody. His red Victorian trenchcoat made him look as if he he was a bloodstain in a lagoon of blue, moving about quietly as if he frequented the sanctuary of the most powerful woman in his life.

Integra Hellsing entered through another door, flanked by a cloud of vapor. She looked vulnerable without her glasses; did it help that she clutched a knee-length bathrobe around herself, a chaste virgin with an unexpected guest? Her hair was almost half-dry, as if she had thought about putting it in a towel all by itself but decided to hand-dry it instead, perhaps to make herself look less ridiculous for reprimanding Alucard. Even at her age, she was beautiful - as if the years wanted nothing more than to make her more or less... non-poignant.

"Alucard," she acknowledged roughly. "Please put that perfume down and quiet that racket." Her legs were smooth, shaven, and the scent of chamomile followed her as she went to her wardrobe, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand and rummaging within for her nightwear. Her left shoulder was bare, and her neck was likewise. He saw the scar; it was that scar that made him almost wantonly lust after her in his quiet hours, his dreams filled with all that forbidden skin.

The Midian obeyed with a demure smile, delicately placing the tiny bottle back on the desk and gently closing the music box. The notes perished under Integra's deep but feminine voice.

"I've had a stroke of inspiration. I also wasn't expecting you to come so soon. I have something you need to hear, but I'd rather not make me wait in case I suddenly cease to give a damn. Face the wall!" she ordered, curt, her voice darkening for the command.

The vampire, amusing himself with inappropriate thoughts, turned and stared at the wall.

"You've been in this family for decades," her voice began. It was an interesting effect, listening to her monologue as it traveled from one end of the room to the other, followed by the muffled staccato of bare feet on the floor. "You are reliable, efficient, ruthless, and costly." A deep, gusting sigh that floated by his left ear: "And I haven't forgotten that you saved my life that day, so many years ago. I've been thinking for a long, long time about it. About what I would have to do to repay you. This is... complicated for me to say this."

"This is not a matter of... guilt, is it?" Alucard interrupted. "Because, I assure you, my purpose in life--"

"--is as droll and tiresome and hopeless as... well. I'm not a poet like you." Integra's voice strengthened as she drew near. "But what are you really on about? What am I not doing for you that can somehow make you... hmm...happier?" For lack of a better word, she chose that one. It was simple, and covered a broad spectrum of meanings to make sure she was not mistaken.

Alucard struggled to prepare a response, and it was hard when he couldn't look at her. Suddenly his mind drew a total and complete blank. _What? Happy? When has she or anyone concerned themselves with my happiness? This isn't like her. This is not right._

"Alucard?" A hint of impatience.

"It's not my place," he murmured, bailing quickly from the responsibility. "I know you have asked, and that I must answer, but to preserve your image, I cannot answer. It is beyond the realm of human understanding and... I'm sorry to say that that includes you, master."

"Are you calling me _stupid_?"

"No, I'm calling you _dense_." His eyes sparked with mischief. "However, you are much less dense than most humans. But not to worry. If you're worried about my happiness, I can see to my own needs."

"That is what worries me!" Integra shouted. "Turn around." She was in the process of tying her hair back, infuriation making her skin flushed. "Don't you see? First it was Seras. Now this. I don't want to put you away like my father did! You're too invaluable for me to just lock you in the basement, pretend you never existed. But you're becoming unpredictable!"

"You want to know if it's something you're doing... or not doing?"

"YES! What should the organization do? What can we provide? What--"

"It's not." Alucard's breath hissed softly from his nose, a sigh, and he meditatively took off his hat, letting it hang from the back of her chair. He was touched by her generosity, the worry; he could not, not by any means, allow her to feel responsible for his own madness. "I'm never going to die. I am a product of fate, science, and hatred. Hatred for all life. It's in my nature; I crave the purification of my own race. Circumcise the posers from the real deal."

Integra grew silent, her shoulders drooping slightly before she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Whatever qualms I have with my life, they carry no weight. They're inconsquential. No matter what, I will always do what you say. Not because you're my master. Not because you are strong, cunning, fascinating, and... beautiful." He diverted his eyes to the window, the snow falling, galaxies exploding, contorting, _dancing_...

He lifted the lid of the musix box, and the snowflakes ascended in a gust of wind. "Someday... after the last falls, who else will remain but I?"

"Alu...Alucard," she began, to reassure, to lie.

"It's the truth. I told you once I was too honest. Don't sell yourself short of the truth!" His words were as sharp as the fangs that poked into his lower lip, though his meaning was meant to save her from being the sort of self-sacrificing dishonesty that got people killed.

Integra's smoldering eyes lidded. Her eyelashes fluttered once, before she watched his white-gloved hands close the music box again.

"I wanted to tell you," she spoke again as he replaced his hat onto his head. "Your guest. You can do battle with him. I haven't yet decided where, but I wanted you to know."

For a rare moment, his smile was not cruel but handsome. He let loose a tension that he hadn't noticed building up at the base of his spine. He relaxed, sweeping himself forward into a respectful bow. "Master. Thank you."

Integra smiled back; they traded a long stare, before she wisely removed her eyes from his intoxicating gaze and prepared for a final smoke before bed. She gestured for him to get out; he obliged. After the door clicked shut, it clicked a second time, shutting him out completely from her world of perfume and cigars.

A piercing cry shot through his moment of reflection. _Master! Walter just went to see him and says he's gone!_

"Another game? Delightful." He smiled, the devil in its impurest form, all wickedness and nothing of peace - it just would not be him to be quiet for too long. He forgot the conversation completely in the heart-pounding minutes that followed. "DE-LIGHT-FUL!"

-----------

"We can all help corner him. He's got nowhere to go. This place is too large for him to escape. Even if he did, he couldn't walk down a single avenue without getting harassed by police, what with the sword he's got!"

"That went missing, too?" Alucard stuck a bullet between his lips, grinning around it like a craven lunatic. "Maybe he's too ready to die!"

"The victims were all stabbed. A group of twelve's got him pinned down in corridor C2." Walter and his strings of death, prepped for battle, stood ready with Seras, who didn't dare discharge Harkonnen in Integra's home, wielded a medium-caliber rifle.

Alucard turned away, marching through a wall. _Seras. Ask him how many were killed._

Her voice sounded justly perplexed. _Actually, he says nobody's been killed. The severest injury was a broken arm. Everyone else just got slashed and cut. Nobody dead, master._

"What lovely manners, not killing the master's servants in her own house," Alucard purred, emerging in C2 behind the struggling foot-soldiers. He guardedly informed Seras to watch C4 with Walter as he drove the dhampir back to them. If he couldn't, then he would neutralize him somehow here.

D had barricaded himself behind tables. The suppressive fire laid down by the foot-soldiers were nothing more than a nuisance to the vampire, who proved he could even withstand his blessed bullets. "Retreat now," he ordered; when he was in battle, he acted as a commanding officer ranking below only Integra herself.

Smoke and dust from the guns settled. The figure ensorceled by darkness became clearer to see. "You really are too polite. You managed to get this far without killing a single soul before you were outnumbered." He licked the barrel of "Joshua", the white 13mm destroyer, pinning one eye on the motionless swordsman, the other eye under the brim of his hat. "But you know you can't get through me. Why don't you go back to your room like a nice little boy and I'll put you to bed with a glass of warm blood?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that." D stepped forward, moving around the table. His gaze was a cold and as thick as the ice of the north. He seemed to have been carved out of the darkness and crafted by a master artisan, into this creature of timeless beauty and terrible death.

"Very well!" Alucard howled, peering down the sight at his enemy. Bloodthirsty murder seemed to clash with uncaring coolness. "The Hellsing Organization appreciates your kindness in sparing our men, but I have orders to destroy you... now... Die!"

The only witnesses to the following moments could only remark that it was a spectacular display of speed, precision, and rapid manuevers. As Alucard rained bullets on his enemy, who dodged and darted out of the deadly path of nearly every one, D's body flung into action. This corridor was much wider and higher than the corridor from before. Movement was still restricted, but who said the battle had to be fought on the floor?

When Alucard needed time for a reload, it was then D made his effort to strike. However, Alucard did not make his fight as a stationary turret. He flung himself bodily out of the path of the sword, his eyes wide and crimson as he felt a small bit of his hat slice off in the after affects. He nailed a blow with his foot to the hunter's body, the bodily thud filling the lull. He lunged away, rolling toward the tables where D had been hiding before, and fired from under his arm at the retreating figure in black. However, rather than retreating like a coward once again, D's left hand jerked out as if he meant to snatch the bullet out of the air, and it hit without a spatter of blood.

Alucard froze. Was that a ... a _face_ in the palm of his hand?

But D did not comment. Instead he lowered his left hand until it disappeared against the rest of the shadows of his body. He readied for another attack, resetting flawlessly into his pose. The dance continued, filling the walls with bullets, Alucard firing, drawing close, lunging to grab for anything - a throat, a limb, the sword itself - but always the dhampir would dance just beyond his reach. Alucard drew back, his aquine nose flaring with indignation. One thing for sure was that D was not to be budged, even though the fight had moved a considerable distance. But not C4.

"Interesting," Alucard muttered, and the thrilling mystery of that strange occurence just now made his muscles quiver and bow like so many tense fibers. "But I've seen better tricks, bastard. There's no way I'm letting you leave this corridor. In a few moments, my master will arrive, and you wouldn't slay any human being to escape, would you?"

"I've had to kill them before. I'll do it again if I must."

"I bet they were so tasty. Ah, but you don't embrace your thirst, do you?" Alucard straightened. He felt wetness on his cheek that could only be blood. He narrowed his eyes. So the dhampir hadn't just cut his hat. He smelled the dhampir's blood from flak, and his senses reeled for a moment. "Where will you go?" the Midian challenged at last. "There are a million cities in this wretched world, all of them as anti-freak in mindset as the next. There's no place in this world for your kind. Oh! I know you'll try, try so hard to be someone you can't be, but in the end... you're a hunter, and when you go to sleep during the day, you are still a vampire!" He slowly lifted the Jackal - whose rounds exploded upon contact. What sort of devestation did he hope to wreak upon his body?

But that voice, as smooth as virgin satin as emotionless as the wind - it might have been the wind talking through him - interrupted again. "Why do you call her 'master'?"

"That's for me to know and you to ponder, child of night and day. Now, enough questions!" He sighted him down the barrel, gave a polite smile and prepared to fire.

"Is it because you love her?"

Alucard's blood suddenly exploded into a boil. His teeth were bared in a defensive snarl of outrage. "How dare you! My loyalty toward my master is out of respect! I was defeated, as was fair, by a single human Van Hellsing. Since then, I have endured such pain and horrors beyond imagining, and I have obeyed those that carry that name or Hellsing blood in their veins."

"I didn't ask you if you respected her. I asked you if you loved her."

Alucard chewed the inside of his cheek, sneering. "Of course I don't. A woman like Sir Hellsing has no heart for a vampire's fancy, and I'm incapable of such petty attachments."

"Is that so?"

The dhampir's expression was as unchanging as the face of the moon. It was so quiet that Alucard could hear, beneath the throbbing of machinery through the walls, the dust particles falling to the floor. Then there was the sweet music of the sword being replaced in its sheath. Alucard scoffed in disbelief, hardly entertaining the idea that the hunter was quitting. He never lowered his weapons until D spoke again.

"You said you wanted to fight me. If you want to stay in your master's good graces, we'd better not fight here." With that, he turned and faced the on-coming group of people. There was Seras, with her rifle, stopping on a dime to take aim; Walter, who was armed with apparently no weapons at all; and Integra who was armed. She saw that the fight was over already and relaxed.

"Why did you try to get away?" she demanded, turning her crystalline eyes on the phantom in the corridor.

"I wanted to ask him a few questions."

Alucard laughed, his weapons slowly being replaced. "It's true. We did fight for a little while... but it seems you keeping us apart has made him frustrated. He just wants someone to talk to!"

The master of the house surveyed the pair in barely disguised animosity. She had just recieved the information and prepared herself for battle, when the pair had flawlessly ended it for her already. "Do you know how much this--?" She glared at the damage, before looking at the hunter. He was already reaching into his money pouch - it was the very one he had carried on his person when he was uncovered. He must have recovered it with his sword.

"Will this cover it? It's the last I have." Three shiny circular coins made of gold caught the glint in the flickering lights and fell into her palm after a precise toss. She stared at them in mute fascination.

"Are you daft?" Seras gasped, poking her head over Integra's shoulder to see.

"It's not enough?"

Integra shook her head dazedly, before snapping back to attention. "It's... it's more than-- Walter!"

"Yes, Integra, sir?"

"Take these... once you're sure it's real, immediately go to our banker and arrange that they be converted to money. And I'd like to get Susan on the line to get the repair personnel here."

Walter smiled broadly, as he had not done in years. "Of course. Are you to be letting Alucard and D to converse now?"

"May as well. Can't afford to keep repairing every damn thing that goes wrong here. But you must promise not to destroy my house again! I won't go through the trouble of moving you somewhere else."

D did not seem to care what happened to him no matter what was decided, and simply stood off to the side. Alucard did not forget about him. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Well. Since you were only locked away so I couldn't talk to you, you have the run of the house. I trust you are house-trained, little one, or do I have to explain what a john is?" Alucard snarled maliciously, but it was not out of hatred. He softened his words but only slightly as he continued, nonplussed by his compatriot's silence. "There are rooms every floor of the wing. Some of them are guest rooms for my master's far-and-between friends. Given your circumstance, I'm sure you'd appreciate a nice soft bed instead of a cot." Ah, he couldn't resist. "Or maybe you'd like a coffin? I have a few!"

D said nothing at all again, but the slight tightening of his lips revealed his growing contempt. Alucard counted that as a strike for the home team.

"Seras!" the vampire snapped, and quite literally snapped his fingers. The girl jerked out of her boredom and rushed over. "I'm sure our master won't mind if he takes a room?"

Integra shrugged, waved them away. "I don't care as long as he doesn't break anything or kill anyone."

Seras gave a tiny little hiccup, pointing her finger toward the ceiling to object. But there was no argument. She shouldered her rifle and groused her way toward the stairs. She snapped a glance at D, who followed, and said, "How come every time something happens around here I'm the last bloody git to know about it? You two are driving me crazy!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes: **I wonder if my brain is trying to tell me something. Is there some kind of special day coming up soon that I should be aware of? Can someone tell me what it is? Oh. By the way. More AxI fluff. Don't maim.

**Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 6 **: Lessons in Vampirism

------

Seras Victoria gave a little sigh, a tremor racing up her spine when she felt the cold ice wall walking beside her advancing one step for every two that she took. She subconsciously tried to measure her steps to match his own simply to feel less at odds with his height and stature. She only ended up feeling awkward, and then guilty as she noticed him slowing down.

"You still wait for his commands, don't you?" D asked her. It seemed a miracle that he was speaking to her first, and even asking her such a weird question!

She felt his voice cut through the tension like a rusted butter knife. It was uncomfortable being the one under the microscope. "Hey, that's between me and my master! Don't ask stupid questions."

"Fine."

Seras marched up the stairs, switching the rifle to the opposite shoulder. Her eyes glinted red as she passed by the multiple doors, all of them slightly differentiated; some of the staff took up residence here. Maybe it was a gesture of kindness to start treating D like a guest rather than a prisoner. Or maybe it was a ploy to get his guard down so her master could splatter his half-breed brains all over the expensive carpets!

Eventually, Seras's curiousity beat her down again and she wondered aloud, glancing slantily at the dhampir. "So, do you think you can defeat him? My master can kick a lot of arse and he's not afraid to tell you!"

"He certainly talks a lot."

"That's because he's so great that he can and nobody can say otherwise," Seras replied confidently. "And he only talks a lot probably because you don't talk at all."

"I only say what's important." D looked at her coldly from under the brim of his hat.

They turned a corner and Seras stopped, eyes faded slightly as she listened to a voice only she could hear. It was not a case of schizophrenia; it was Alucard, which could be considered worse, as he told her that she should pick a room soon unless she was already engaging in some other _physical_ activities with the dhampir.

Seras straightened up quickly with a scowl on her face. She glared back at D as if it was his own fault. "This one," she snapped, turning to open the doorknob. She turned to enter the room, her eyes unfocused before snapping to the symbol on the wall. She was barely four steps across the carpet before she fell to the floor, arms held before her face, hissing and writhing like a serpent against the agony crawling over her skin. She felt the cold passing of a shadow as D swept into the room, snatching the cross from the wall. His hand smoked as he threw it underneath the dresser, disappearing with a metal tap beyond sight.

Seras looked over at D, relaxing visibly. "It's not that it was hurting me," she muttered. "It just surprised me... that's all..."

"I didn't do it for you." He removed his hat slowly, putting it on the dresser. She was momentarily distracted by his hair before she stood up again, dusting off her knee-highs.

"Well. Other than that cross, this room is as cozy as it gets."

The phantasmic dhampir gave her a final look before laying himself down on the soft, cushioned bed. It wasn't furnished with blankets yet, but that didn't seem to bother him as he let his body sink into the king-sized mattress. He seemed totally uninterested in conversing or socializing with Seras.

"You could at least say thank you! At least you're not sleeping on a cot." Seras found a place for her rear end on the very edge of the mattress, looking around quietly. There were potted flowers in the room, their soft vulnerable colors muted in the dim light. Beyond the window the snow still continued to fall. There was a respectable amount of snow accumulating in the flower box outside, and frost had crept along the edges of the window panes. Beyond that, from this upper floor window, the night was falling again on London and its shattered remnants. But in the small broken windows of the shanty capital, there were yet lights glowing in the blackness. Those who refused death embraced life, and set their candles on windowsills to negate the darkness of the holocaust.

"I used to celebrate Christmas with my crew in the morning and with my family at night. The day I became Alucard's Draculina, I had to think of all the things I wouldn't be able to do anymore. If I wanted to try to be with my family, I'd have to try harder to seem like the way I was. I'd have to fit in... and I'd have to explain to everyone why there would be people in uniforms eyeballing me the whole time." Seras smiled darkly under a fringe of blonde hair. "But I made the choice. I might have had my doubts at first, but isn't that what change is all about? I don't regret it a bit. I can do things no one else but very few can do... and I don't know anyone else can can rightfully call Alucard their master!"

D listened in a silence that was complete, but attentive.

Seras rubbed her knees. "I don't know about you, though. You didn't a get a choice in the matter, you just sort of... were. I mean, as a baby you can't say, 'I don't wanna be born', right?"

Maybe it was the sadness she expressed, but it was a small wonder that he replied. "You should spend Christmas with your family this year."

"Hmph. Figures you don't wanna talk about yourself. You're just like Alucard, then." She swung her feet, boots scuffing on the floor. "Maybe I should... Hey, D..." She swallowed. "Do you have Christmas where you come from?"

"Where I come from, towns celebrate native traditions and also Frontier-wide holidays. It seems this world precedes the Frontier by eons. Around this time of year there's a winter solstice recognized all across the Frontier. There's exchanging of gifts, songs, drinking. It's widely known as a time of putting aside grievances, taking up a creed of brotherhood."

"Not quite Christmas. Did you ever...? Ah, nevermind. Probably not." Seras grinned a little like Alucard, and turned to stare down D. "You're too serious! If you're going to live here as Sir Hellsing's guest, you ought to start behaving like part of the family if you want her to like you more. After all, she's already agreed to let Alucard fight you somewhere far away. In the large foyer downstairs, they're decorating the tree. You should go see it tomorrow morning. It's house tradition to start decorating on the first snow."

D did not answer, but he seemed genuinely interested. Seras gave him one last long look before rising. Her tone of voice changed. "I don't want you to get hurt... but if you kill my master, you'll be killing me as well. I won't be human again. That's the way Midians work. We're the most powerful of all vampires, and the oldest. I mean, I really doubt you can do anything to kill him! No one can!" She perked up noticably. Then she bowed slightly. "Call Walter if you need anything. There's a phone in here somewhere. Only rule is, can't leave the grounds without someone accompanying you."

As she left, D's left hand muttered, "What a stubborn idiot. But at least she's not a bloodsucking bitch like the others."

"Maybe not. But she is his. How long until he uses her to get to me?"

"You're already softening up to her. Those were the most words I've heard you speak since they dragged us out of that damned coffin." The voice came from a face in the palm of his hand. It made itself visible, sneering. "I guess your great plan didn't work after all. Why didn't you just do yourself in?"

"I still had hope."

"That things would change for the better when - if - you woke up? I told you before, like I'm tellin' you now, things don't get better with age. Things die out, they fade, they get cranky with menopause."

"They have pills in this world for that now."

"Smartass. Hmph. You still haven't told me what you're going to do about trigger-happy. Are you going to fight him when the time comes?"

"I have to."

"But what are you going to do in the meantime? You don't expect me to stick around if you're just gonna throw your life away, are you?" The voice was thick with anger, barely formulating the words. "You stupid son of a bitch! He won't fight you unless you give him a run for his money! And in that case, he'll almost definitely kill you!"

"You'll just have to wait and see," D monotoned, glaring at the ceiling. But curiousity made him sit up and approach the window. It was cold enough to freeze anything liquid in a heartbeat. The lights caught in the freshly fallen snow made a wonderland not often seen on the Frontier. But admist that destruction, he saw something he had only seen on the Frontier - a people struggling to scrape hope from the bottomless barrel of despair.

-------

The snow made a funny sound underneath her feet, something between a crunch and a squeak. It was well after night, the floodlights filling the courtyard with an ethereal blue glow. A dark blue scarf was snugly tucked around her neck, her body draped in a heavy forest green peacoat. Her crystalline blue eyes were thoughtful and distant as she stared into the snow, unmarred by footprints since the snow had fallen. It was a rare moment for her to stand outside and think, alone, unguarded and vulnerable.

Then, she tipped back her head and caught a snowflake on her tongue. It was to her surprise that it tasted cold and sweet at once, like childhood, when everything had its own sweetness, different kinds of good. Christmas was her favorite time of year back then; the tree would go up, and she would walk proudly with her father when he was still alive and give out treats to the guests. Even after her father's death and Alucard had become her solitary guardian and immortal soldier of ill fortune, she still put up the tree every year, the decorations taking days to be put into place.

Alucard would be permitted to watch, often from the corner of the room, sometimes standing, sometimes seated on the wall high up in the corner and offering directions as to what should go where. There would be gold, sparkling lights, silver and black, and plenty of blue. The tree would be hung with dozens of decorations made over the year, and here and there were little fanged skulls, credited to Alucard.

It was bizarre that such memories burned so strongly in her mind. She tasted snowflakes and felt warm instead of cold. She turned to glance to her left. Perhaps not surprisingly, she saw Alucard again, head tipped back in rapture as his tongue stuck out to catch snowflakes. Not a single footprint disturbed the snow around him, as if he had simply materialized into place. His hat was gone, and white snowflakes clung to his midnight hair like waning stars in the frigid cold. His crimson eyes rolled toward her to match her gaze, the rest of his head following to look at her. He looked like a painting, his lips pouting in consternation, his slitted, sleepy eyes fixated on hers as if he had been waiting all eternity for her.

Despite herself, Integra gave a teasing smirk. Her laughter made the vampire smile.

"One more Christmas," she bade him quietly after a few seconds. "Perhaps you'll change your mind about him--"

"No." He approached slowly, calculating each step, his boots crunching gently in the snow, destroying thousands of them every time his heel came down. He stopped in front of her, and tipped her chin up to his face. "Do you want to know what that fool asked me?"

"What did that fool ask you, Alucard?" Integra goaded, trembling in spite herself, convinced it was just the wintry chill.

His soft, gloved touch reached past her scarf to her neck. Her heartbeat was calm and steady, his eyes penetrating. Integra looked away. "He asked me if I loved you." His breath made no vapor in the air at all.

"And do you?" A cloud of vapor flowed between them. She idly pawed at his tie, rubbing the fabric between her bare fingers until he took her hand away, holding it.

"Never." A tiny movement spread his mouth into an almost handsome smile.

"Alucard--" The woman seemed to have frozen totally by his stare. But, rather than be rendered helpless, the master gave her servant something else to consider while she pressed the point of a silver, blessed dagger to his throat and held him at bay. "Don't."

His eyebrow twitched, seeking redemption in the gleam of the dagger. "So you _have_ ceased to trust me."

Integra backed away, replacing the dagger into her sleeve. "The only mistake you ever made," she replied coldly, "was thinking that I ever did." Her savage smile of confident victory gave him a moment to reflect on how much he should hate her for being this way. But she was too smart, overthinking his intentions. His eyes hardened to little red slits, before he reached into his pocket.

Integra felt him take her hand and put the tiny bottle in it, secured with a navy blue bow. His fingertips pressed her wrist only for a moment before he let go, virgin white on milky skin and purple veins. "Merry Christmas, master." The words clung to him all the way back to the door, until he opened them and the red of his overcoat was swallowed by the shadows inside. The No-Life King's last gift to his master weighed nothing in her hand at all. She looked down, staring at the perfume bottle that caught the flood lights and she uttered a soft choked cry of loathing - directed only at herself.

She tucked it safely into the pocket of her peacoat, shutting her eyes. The illusion of Christmas had been shattered by the sight of his lips, so tempting, drawing nearer, filling her lungs with the alluring scent of the undying. But fear had ruined it, and the trusting bond between them grew ever weaker.

Unthinking, she shoved the bottle into her pocket and ran for the door. "Alucard!" she shouted, scarf trailing behind her. She threw open the doors again and looked around, but there was no one in the foyer except for the tree and its attendants. Walter tilted his head and gazed at her, concerned to see her so flustered.

"Sir?"

"Nothing," she cut him off, looking away. "Have some wine delivered to my room in an hour, Walter... I need to be alone."

"Is... something wrong?" Walter pulled her aside and tried to look at Integra's face, but if she was known for anything, it was her stubborn nature. "Alright, then. What kind of wine?"

"Maybe not wine. Send me something stronger."

"Sir. It may not be my place to say--"

"Then don't say it!" she snapped, tearing the peacoat off as she ascended the stairs to her room. Walter sighed deeply, excusing the master's behavior to sleepless nights.

--------

It was past midnight when Alucard woke again. He had not realized he had been sleeping until the sound of feminine footsteps were descending the long stairway to his chambers. He was tirelessly rubbing a bullet between his thumb and finger, and it was warm from the friction. He let it fall to the table beside his stone seat and stared at the long shadow. He knew who it was long before he saw her; the smell of cigars preceded her coming, and before he could remind her gently about what she promised, he smelled alcohol.

It was too dark for human eyes to see. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, then took a few steps forward, sucking at the cigar, making a glow too small for her to see by. "Alucard."

"Master. You've been hitting the bottle, I see." His voice betrayed his amusement. He admitted that it was not without some satisfaction to see her totally inebriated beyond reason. "Perhaps a little too hard. What do you suppose you're doing down here? You could have fallen down the stairs."

"But I didn't, and that is the important thing." She came forward. The darkness did nothing to hide her voluptuous form. She had come dressed to impress, maybe. Or maybe she had forgotten to change her clothes entirely. Her formless, barely opaque night-gown glowed around her body, set ablaze by her own body heat, wrapped in the sweet cloud of cigar smoke. Alucard gripped the edge of the armrest before relaxing slowly, finding some measure of self-control.

As he was standing, she lost her balance; her cigar struck the floor in a shower of tiny sparks. He was there in an instant when she tripped. But all she knew was that his arms were around her; then she was clawing at his white shirt, pulling it until buttons broke and they scattered on the stone floor. She bit his lip, but her teeth couldn't hope to break the skin. She smelled like lilacs. It was her perfume. When Integra forced a tongue against his teeth, he let her kiss him. Or, more to the truth, he kissed her until the angry fight went out of her limbs and she clung more out of need to stay upright.

Vampires kisses were lethal and unwieldy tactics to use on strong-willed mortals. But he ran the risk of being pulled into her own desire, the hot-blooded lust that ran rampant in her veins. The little slick membrane under her tongue throbbed with blood, tasting strongly of the alcohol she'd been drinking and the cigars she so loved. Tiny, minute tremors raced along her back when he raked his gloved fingertips over it. Even drunk, she was well-versed in the power he held over her at this moment.

She moaned his name and moved her hands over his chest, where his unbeating heart lay. It was terrifying and exhilirating to see her like this, but no matter what his bestial mind craved, he could not, shouldn't, let her actions go beyond this. Her hands felt wonderfully warm on his skin...

She pulled away, as if waking out of a dream. In her eyes, he counted the emotions that sputtered in and out of life. Confusion and shame and guilt and acceptance chased each other in that order, until she lay her head on his chest again, her curving locks of gold (likesunlightinautumn) crashing over her eyes. "I'm sorry," she murmured, voice rusty with booze.

Alucard sheltered her in his arms. "Will you go to sleep now, master?" He did not mean for it to sound taunting, but the situation seemed too heavy to stay serious. He stroked her forehead, and her eyes fluttered once before shutting completely. He carried her as far as the stairs, acknowledging the button for the intercom but ignoring it. To spare her the embarassment of calling down Walter to bring her back upstairs the way she was dressed, he decided to bring her there himself.

When he pulled the covers up to her chin, she turned over onto her side and embraced one of her pillows, exhaling deeply and moaning as she did so. Alucard considered the poignant scene for a long time, gripped by a sort of lethargy, well after she had slipped into a more natural sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Notes: **This is an accurate description of what goes on in the Hellsing household these days, as interpretted by Makorechan (go check that person's new fanfic out! It's sizzlin'!)

alucard: ALL UR WOMAN R BELONG 2 ME

integra: get back in the house.

alucard: yes dear ;( trudges back

d: whisper whiiiipped.

integra: DUN DUN DUNNNNN deathglare

d: already running

**Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 7 **: We're Damned After All

------

Walter kept a wary eye on Integra Hellsing's well-being. She was reclining tiredly in her leather arm chair, gazing stiffly from behind her wireframe glasses. Her usually severe expression was masked by a small measure of pain. There was a hot cup of tea sitting by her hand on the desk, waving tendrils of steam floating into the air; a bottle of over-the-counter pain relievers was not four inches away from that. She slid her glasses up to pinch and massage the bridge of her nose, brow furrowed deeply, yet another cigar wedged stubbornly in the corner of her mouth.

"The family wants their little girl back. They've signed over a ridiculous sum of cash for her. But regardless of how much money we're getting, we have a God-given obligation to see to the task anyway."

The ill mood set upon the room was probably due to to her late-night adventure. The overriding chill that beset her and made her wear more layers than usual was attributed to the combined presence of Alucard and D, standing opposite one another with only her desk and Walter in between. Their opposing gazes made for an interesting aura that choked the entire room with supernatural blackness. Her lonely desk lamp glowed softly, stubbornly fighting off the gloom cast by the two similar creatures.

"This is a very delicate situation, as always. The child involved must not be killed. D, will you see to it that she makes it safely outside to Walter?"

"I will." D glanced at Walter, who nodded and smiled. He seemed more comfortable around him. How long that would last, who knew, after everyone in the household had heard of D surviving a skirmish with the No-Life King?

"Go!" Integral growled, raising her eyes from the shadow of her hangover, a madness slowly creeping over her. "Go now and do God's will! Annihilate those freaks for God and salvage what's left of humanity!"

As the trio hunkered down for transportation, D's baleful eyes swerved toward the Midian as he rubbed a bullet between his fingers, gazing with little regard to what was going on around him, boredom etched into the tired lines on his face.

"You aren't excited at all."

"Why should I?" The words almost cut through the air with petulance, like a child asking why he should be grateful he got presents at Christmas at all, when he did not recieve the gift he wanted. He was sitting on top of his coffin, staring at the other with a devious smile. "It will be over so quickly, like an orgasm come too soon. How disappointing." He flicked the bullet at his companion; the blessed metal sizzled in D's palm. His expression didn't change, though he flicked it back. How odd that the bullets did not have any effect at all on the vampire. "Care to make it more interesting then?"

"Now, now," Walter interrupted, smirking at the pair. "This time, I don't want to have to cart him away on a stretcher. After all, he's responsible for the life of that child." Walter's expression sobered faintly. "D. I'll be keeping a hold on the detonator. If you should try anything, know that I won't hesitate to kill you!"

The rest of the journey passed in silence. Walter passed around a picture of the girl. She was beautiful, almost cherubic as only dhampir children are rumored to be; the photographer might have been one of the few master's remaining of his art. She sat before a large pond surrounded by flowers, glowing with the light of the summer sun. Her hair was bobbed and curled, her smile slow and intelligent.

"The vampire took her three years ago from the orphanage. This photo of her is from before the 2nd Nazi Invasion. She would be 16 years old now. She was last spotted alive near an abandoned American army depot on the Channel. It's been abandoned for a couple of years, left rotting half-submerged in the water."

In a matter of months, the United States abandoned all of their outposts in the vicinity of England and returned only after the battle for arms reclamation. Anything left over was useless to them, scavanged by the wretched remains of those who somehow survived. London, for months, had been nothing but a stagnating graveyard, whose corpses gave birth to disease and filth. For a few months, Integra had been forced out of her homeland to live in a cleaner part of the world while the gore and ichor littering the burning streets was burnt and purged away.

The depot was half-sunken into the thames. No one had bothered to break it up and sell the metal pieces for money. It loomed through the winter fog like a sea cast ashore in a storm, snapped power-lines coated with grime. It was a bitter cold day following the first snow; there was not a sound nor breath of life within a mile of the place, the burned out skeletons of armored cars and indeed people buried in mud from a decade of muddy springs and autumns. Snow piled on top of spindly metal interiors, making them look pale and crystallized in the dark.

Alucard looked back and forth, lifting his upper lip in a grimace of pleasure. "A playground for fools," he commented. "If she's not dead, she's frozen solid somewhere here in the snow."

D stepped out into the snow. Every sound was muffled by the white blanket around them. The water was as still as perfect glass, obsidian in the fading daylight. He drew his sword - even that sound was dulled, as if he were drawing it in a seperate room in a small building - and planted it firmly in the ground, crouched, and listened with his head bent toward the blade.

Alucard watched him intensely. His ears could pick up trace sounds. But even the rats that scuttled here were mangy and starved. What a neat trick, he observed as D stood and recovered his sword from the snowy, hard-packed earth.

"I hear movement. It's very faint. But it's definitely coming from inside. But..."

"What?" Walter looked to D, smiling, anticipating a good fight.

"The water."

"Hm?"

"It's too still. Like... something I've seen before." He gazed at the water intensely. A slow change came over his body, his hand holding the sword at his side as if he were considering a canvas he was about to transform into a peerless work of imminent beauty. It gave him a kind of human quality that, for all intents and purposes, Alucard utterly lacked. It made him stunningly jealous of him once again. Just where between the narrow line between monster and man did this one walk?

But then he saw what was wrong with the water. His eyes gazed more closely at its surface. Beneath it, yes... it seemed to be undulating with an inconstant throb of... something. Two heavy guns raised slowly, aiming directly at the heart of the black, pulsating mass.

"Another monster. Another devil from the depths of Hell. From whence did you come, and where will you go?" He fired. The mass beneath the water, so quiet and still, then rose in an enormous spray of polluted filth. It was as tall as a bus standing on its end, a shapeless blackness writhed to mock the bullets that had broke its waxen surface. It was unlike anything Walter or Alucard had seen; it gave a sound that sounded something like a foghorn and an emptying water tank before a smaller black figure leapt skyward and descended with the silver line of a sword against the darkness. Four times his sword flew, in less than two seconds.

The engorged black mass writhed, cut into eights, tumbling back onto itself. But it reformed from below, rising again and snatching the dhampir's legs, dragging him beneath frozen waters. It was hard to tell whether he was under water or devoured by the ooze that had sucked him down out of sight.

Walter surged forward, but Alucard held him back, pointing at his face with the barrel of his gun. "Let me go see what he's doing," he purred. "That water is far too cold for you, and you're a mortal too."

With that, he plunged into the blackness and vanished as well. Walter stood trembling with a mixture of outrage and worry, before he turned to glance around their surroundings. Besides the roiling water, everything was quiet.

------

It was choking under the water. But Alucard, who needed never to breathe, fought the grasping, sucking ooze that was determined to soak through his clothes and blacken his skin. He saw D, by spying the glint of the blue gem around his throat, and made for him, shooting bullets through the ooze, until the viscous material made his weapons useless. He grit his teeth, bared his fangs, and reached out with one monumentous effort. They seemed weightless in the nothingness around them, and D seemed to be just... floating there. In his dark, black little heart, he hoped to see him live so he could rend his perfect flesh apart and prove that darkness was not beautiful, that immortality was not kind.

Though no one but D could see it, Alucard's eyes turned red, and he felt himself falling apart, becoming part of the monster around them. He drank its power right from the hardening fluid around them; he did not change, but became, and the screaming cries of a hundred souls echoed within his mind.

A bright white light shattered his concentration. A conflageration whose origin was the vicinity of D's left hand was spiralling out of control; within that palm, he saw again the mean little face with its black, open mouth, spawning its own whirlwind of havoc and chaos. A grimacing, fanged grin framed that vortex. A tiny, distant point of light flickered inside of its gullet, before it faded and vanished. Then, just as Alucard realized what was happening, that the vortex was drawing him within itself, threatening to send his very existent into that unknown, terrifying purgatory beyond.

He screamed, dragging his body molecules out of the fluid, becoming whole again, and then exploding into a storm of black, red-eyed, shrieking bats. The water foamed with the action of all his collective wings beating at once, moving skyward, drenching Walter with water as he passed over head, the frantic desire to get away annoying him. He collected himself at the shore, his eyes scanning the darkened waters. D broke the surface, retrieved his hat, disappeared again.

Then he was pulling himself out of the water, trembling and gasping as if he were nothing but human. His eyes were bleeding crimson, and the blue of his gaze was swimming in its own ruby dye. His hair was black when it was wet. Alucard's lip curled slowly. He himself enjoyed the perfectly dry, wintry air.

Walter helped D stand up. "Are you quite alright? That was quite a feat. What happened down there?"

"It's gone," was all D said, straightening and regaining most of his composure. Flawlessly intercepted by Alucard as he marched back up the bank, he gave him a level, even stare as Alucard forced his left hand upwards. There was nothing there. Then, quietly, just the mouth formed and it said in an undertone,

"Pushy bastard, aren't you? Always got to have all the glory. Get a life!"

A derisive sound answered the carbuncle's words as Alucard dropped the hand. D's unwavering gaze was diverted toward the depot again. "Satisfied?"

"Oh, no. More curious than ever." He laughed at him, at his weakness of water. He could feel it pulling at his strength like the gravity of a much denser planet. He looks so mortal, it's painful to look at him. How can he be so monstrous and human in the same breath? Bastard! Whose child are you?

"It will have to wait." The blackened figure strode forward, cheeks stained by the ink of the blackness like tears, mixed with blood. It seemed, in those clear crystalline depths, there was a trap set for those who looked too deeply. A trap that made them forget who they were, digging deep into their own hearts until it made their very breath stop in their throats and wonder.

Alucard licked his fingertips lasciviously, enjoying the flavor of blood with the taste of the demon from the water, watching him with narrowed eyes, troubled, deaf to Walter's questions. He's impenetrable, his mind reeled. He is a god among men but a black mark against our kind. What kind of future does he hail from that spawns such beautiful beings?

"Tell me," Alucard bade the dhampir, "do you weep when you destroy vampires? Do they beg for mercy, or do they count themselves as fortunate to fall at your blade?"

"I can't say," D answered softly. "When I entered the coffin... I wanted to sleep forever. At that time, I finally understood what it meant to suffer the stagnation of the soul. I chased my own shadow across the world, endlessly, back and forth in a tireless effort to redeem the sins of my father."

"'The stagnation of the soul,'" Alucard mused, as if mocking his flighty, frivolous, flowery words. But within, his soul was quaking. No matter how he manipulated it, it would not be still, and with more gravity than he admitted, the words were hanging on him like the droplets of water on his companion's black hair. He let loose a soft, rasping breath, and then another. Husky, breathless laughter that sounded suspiciously like a desperate attempt at levity bounced across the Thames.

The cracked interior of the building stank of corrosion and rust. For eyes so accustomed to darkness, this sanctuary that reeked of sin was not so terrible. Slowly, blinking sleepily, a multitude of eyes (not nearly as many as Alucard's) gazed as if into their souls, tearing them apart thread by thread, muscle by muscle, baring their bones. And the pair, immutable in their strength, bore the scrutiny with unimpressed or unphased expressions.

_The girl. The Girl. Find her_, Alucard urged his silent friend, his body unravelling slowly as he tapped into his power. _I'll manage this upstart! _His sleepy smile grew into one of outright bloodlust, eyes widening, flooded with the malice of a hundred thousand tortured, wretched souls. But they were not for this battle. "_Releasing Art Restriction to Level Three_..."

D turned, his lean body slipping effortlessly between stacks of empty, broken boxes, breathing the stagnating air. The ceiling was punctured with artillary fire and snow had collected in patches along the ground. The rising moon cast diagonal beams of silver into the open spaces between towers of open, gutted crates.

A frightened sound, intermittent gasping for breath between whimpers. The girl was close.

"_Two... One. Ready.. or not!_"

D was not prepared for the surge of black, choking, all-consuming cold that flooded the entire grounds. It was not even so much that he was physically cold, but that it entered his brain, bleeding into every iota of his being, contaminating his senses with power so like his, it left a foul taste on his tongue that would not vanish when he rubbed it on the roof of his mouth. He stopped to turn and look back, glazed eyes watching the two vampiric entities clash and twist against each other, a dozen mouths with diamond fangs and bloodshot eyes, each one seeking a vital throat to rip open. The noise was immense; it was enough to terrify a young woman dressed in a soiled yellow dress into breaking for a run out of the shadows.

He caught her in a second. She fought only for a little while, her weak slender arms bunching with muscle before she looked up, captivated by the beauty of the man before her, death all around her. _You're safe_, he told her, under the howling of wretched, soulless demons, tearing into each other's flesh as if they passionately lusted for the taste of each other. Alucard had already won. By now it was for the sheer joy of carnage now that he ripped and carved his way into the other vampire's body with tooth and claw, hunting for that final satisfaction, that endless bliss of taking another soul into himself. From everywhere, his laughter resounded, screaming with irrepressible, raw, terrible and mad joy. A shrill cry of negation rose above it, a man's voice, despair counterpointing the insanity that was Alucard.

When the bloody feast was done at last, and the thousand mouths disappeared and the darkness pooled into a solid mass once again, D approached cautiously with the young woman in tow. The young woman was clutching his cloak, unable to see as he did. And who wanted to see Alucard, lifting his eyes and his gore-stained hands, his perfectly straight, white teeth, all sharp like a shark's, bared in a rapturous grimace.

"You found her," he sighed. It seemed the air heaved with him, compressing around the dhampir's body. The girl quivered. "Now.

"Kill her."

The girl trembled. Her eyes, so clear and bright like on that day, looked toward where she thought she heard Alucard's voice coming from. She very nearly plastered her soiled body to D's, as if he were a talisman against the words dripping from the No-Life King's dark mouth.

Suddenly, the barrel of Casull materialized from the solid black silhouette that his body inhabited. It occured to D at that moment that Alucard was not simply a solid creature anymore; he had become something... more. Something incorporeal that could ravage a small army in seconds. He did not yet know that it was Alucard who decimated the Nazi legions and overran the city with his legions of mangled souls, wretched creatures all devoured one by one over his lifetime.

D's eyes narrowed as the scale of Alucard's power dawned on him.

"N-No!" a high-pitched voice shrieked. "No! I haven't been turned by him! He just dragged me around all the time! I'm not like that demon at all!"

"How insulting," Alucard droned, leveling his cold and blank stare upon the terrified lady. Casull was still pointed at her, despite the fact that D was the only thing standing between them. The head of a giant hound rose from the floor, eyeballing her hungrily. "What a pathetic, cruel little joke!"

D suddenly stepped away from the girl. Once his body was clear, Alucard fired - not waiting for D's jacket, which sported a new hole to match the one suddenly gaping in the girl's chest. Girl now, because her dress fell down in tatters, and there was nothing on her chest save for two small dimples. Her eyes widened in terror and pain. But the whole slowly closed itself over in a matter of seconds, and her expression was sedate and calm.

D turned to side with Alucard, keeping himself a respectful distance from the giant hound head snapping and growling in the shadows.

The girl smiled, pointed fangs pricking into her plump lower lip. But was it a girl or a boy? This child looked no older than twelve, but then vampires, to a point, could bend their shapes to appear any way they pleased if it was within their power.

"The picture's a fake. I could tell the lighting was ever-so-slightly different compared to the background," D said tonelessly. "And the letter written begging to retrieve the 'little girl'..."

"I wrote it," the child said with a man's cultured, smooth tones. "The vampire you just destroyed... was my lover. He couldn't understand what I was trying to do. He wanted to save me from... myself."

"What?" Midian and dhampir both matched their immutable gazes with the boy's. He seemed to be staring into nothing, however, and no matter how hard they tried to force their sight into his mind, it was as if nothing was there.

"Aren't you going to destroy me?" he sighed hopelessly, closing his eyes, opening his arms to the world. "Go ahead. Like this. Here. And you, slash here. It will have me undone like clockwork. Do it!" He was not so much animated as he was fervent with his words. He closed his eyes, waiting, trembling, expectant for the release he would surely be granted.

The Midian's tongue rolled the name of the girl out. "Dorian... Grey. Where is the handsome man from the picture, Mr. Grey?"

"That's one of my names. And dead soon, I hope." A tedious smile shyly tiptoed its way onto the boy's cherubic lips. "I don't want to live like this anymore.

"I'm tired, Count. Give me what I want. You must understand; I've been waiting a long time. I've tasted every wine, slept with every man and woman I've ever wanted, drank deeply of every vice known to man and demon." He opened his eyes, meeting Alucard's incredulous, outraged glare; the hound of Baskerville snarled, spitting saliva and ichor from its maw. "But one last joy is denied me, Alucard."

The boy stunned them further by doing the unthinkable. He actually approached the No-Life King, and placed his hands on the Casull, pulling his aim toward his heart and smiling with a grown man's seduction. The invitation was there; he wanted Alucard to enjoy his death as surely as he had enjoyed Dorian's lover's. "I _want_ it... and you can give it to me. I know you can. Devour me; take my blood and body, like the body of Christ. I may not be as tasty or wholesome as those gone before me, but consider it as gift for your hard work!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Notes: **Dorian Grey is inspired by the character of the same name from the novel, "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. Go out now and read it; I don't own Dorian Grey at all, just... so you all know. This is also a disclaimer for me not being responsible if someone whines that Dorian Grey is not mine. This chapter got way out of control toward the end. You can tell I was starting to unravel. I think it's time to end it soon. (Dun dun dunnnnnn!!!)

**Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 8 **: We All Go to Hell

------

It was well that Alucard was past the point of apathy. He gave the girlish manchild a long, steady look. The snow was falling through the cracks in the ceiling. It was beautiful, this panorama of drudged up dreams and battered benevolence. The young boy before them gave a small, tired smile and moved his hands to go over Alucard, tracing the circular runes on his gloves.

"I'm not asking for your pity," Dorian Grey said in an undertone. His voice grew heavy with anger as he saw Alucard's smile turn to mocking. "Don't believe that story about my picture! It was a ruse to fool those romantic idiots wanting a good story. It may be my life's story, but it was a vampire that seduced me. I've had enough now, I want peace!"

"Do you know what will happen to your pathetic soul? There is no peace where monsters go; we only hope that there will be so that we might not go mad with despair! You, tired? Ridiculous!" The temperature dropped terrifically, so cold that D almost trembled. He, being wet, moved his arm slightly and ice crackled along his sleeve. "What happened to you?" he whispered as his accusatory tone dropped to sadness. "You were elusive and clever and annoying. We know it was you who killed, but you did in such a way that never once raised suspicion that you were a vampire. Only that you were immortal and a killer that baffled inspectors. The only one in your time to drop a veil of terror across the land. How I longed to face you at last!

"Yet... Here you stand, quivering and pathetic and... _disgusting_. Yes, yes... you disgust me. So this is how a monster falls - head bowed, eyes closed, waiting for the guillotine's blade to fall!" His words reverberated, his voice mutating into something monstrous when it traveled back. The dozens of eyes rolled back in response, and that which was called the Baskerville hound trembled before lunging forward, sinking its teeth into his Dorian's shoulder. When it fell back again, his arm was totally gone. There was an empty, bloody hole in his body, having taken part of his upper body as well.

Dorian fell to his knees. "You would go down fighting," he grinned slowly. His body changed, unable to maintain its illusion as he became a full-grown man of remarkable beauty, long, lustrous hazel brown hair and a black suit, no arm, with eyes that were Cola can blue. "You'd fight and rage away at the dying of that which you love..."

"Shut up!" The Midian turned away. "I will not honor your death as your executioner. Find mercy elsewhere, you weak-willed piece of trash!"

D brought his hand to his sword slowly. Dorian Grey was trembling while his vital fluid poured from the gaping injury he sustained. Disbelief drained the color from his reddened lips. When he turned his pleas to D, he was surprised to find himself met with a gaze of glowing compassion. Dorian's own eyes lit up with peerless joy, dumbstruck the dhampir's face filled his field of vision, disrupted by a pure white light... then nothing.

A single piece of wood - possibly blessed - shot forth, nailing him through the heart. Dorian Grey's spirit fled the remains, and his body, once beautiful and the object of desire for decades, crumbled in on itself until it amounted to nothing more than ashes and bleached white bare bones.

"Idiot," Alucard commented. "Unrepentant fool."

"What else could you possibly have wanted of him?" D asked dispassionately, staring at Alucard.

"To be brave!" Alucard snarled, turning his anger on D. "He deserved a coward's death! What a pathetic, pampered little puppy he was, crying to be inside once he couldn't stand the thought of getting wet in the rain! I have no respect for fools!"

The quiet that followed made them both aware of just how cold and miserable it was, surrounded by the cadavers of undead, their spirits lingering on even when their ephemeral bodies ceased to care. D watched as Alucard unravelled the darkness from his body, his vermillion coat opening like a pair of wings as he holstered his weapons and gave the scene a long last look of distaste before turning away.

He was stopped fast by that alluring voice, that damned voice that filled him with terror and wonder. "You won't be alone. You can't hate life and cherish it at the same time, but you do try anyway."

"Because if I don't?" Alucard questioned, smiling at the snow, tipping back his head. "Ashes.. to ashes... We all go to Hell."

From somewhere far away, an old music box was chiming "Scarborough Fair", and nothing stirred in this newly-made tomb.

----------

"The girl didn't make it then?" Walter asked, but the two monsters ignored him. Alucard shook his head at him, climbing into the truck.

"Walter," he said after a thought. "Would you see and tell us if that check, with all that money, was real or fake?"

The butler gave a slow up-and-down nod. After a phone call, he smiled. "It's true. We've acquired a good two-hundred thousand pounds in the balance."

Alucard's lips twisted slightly in dissatisfied hatred. Then he lowered his hat and stared at the floor for the homebound journey.

The same time-slipping effect occured; Walter was suddenly very still, and nothing moved. There wasn't a sound. Every minute motion ceased to be, even the subtle shaking of the air freshener hanging from the rear view. The black van felt more like a hearse with the coffin between them. Immune to the effects, Alucard lifted his head and gazed across at D, who looked back.

"Again?"

"It seems to be happen often when we're traveling." The dhampir seated across from him looked around slowly. His voice sounded muffled, as if the shroud of time had wrapped itself around him.

Stopping time was no small feat. Even he could not tell what exactly was causing it. Suddenly, in the fabric of existence, there was a horrible tearing and rending. The van rattled so horribly that it felt like their teeth would crack from the strain. Alucard grabbed hold of his coffin, lurched from his place across from it. D's hardened gaze went wide with some alarm, snatching hold of Walter, who seemed to hardly mind being grabbed onto in his condition.

"It's some kind of assault!" Alucard snarled. "What the hell is this!?"

"I'm a stone thrown in the river of time. Perhaps more like a boulder. Being in this same space with you seems to cause it."

The once-count's gaze swerved to the immortalized youth, his crystalline gaze filled with fleeting fascination. "Who was your father?" he demanded. He slid over the coffin that had its words scrawled on it. He grabbed D, slamming him against the interior of the van. "Who was he?! Tell me his name!" The stink of blood was thick on his breath.

D grasped at his sleeves to throw him off, but for some other reason he did not. "His name... was..." A look of discomfort touched his eyes. "..._Dracula_..."

Time sluggishly picked up again. Walter looked at the pair suddenly, as if trying to understand how Alucard suddenly appeared with D. Even more incomprehensible was the look that gripped his face; unimaginable sorrow, joy, and emotions he could not even begin to pick apart.

Father Anderson's voice spilled into the empty recesses of the present from the past. "How much longer," he had asked him, "will you continue this miserable existence?"

_Until this past of mine... is vanquished by my future._

"Oh," Alucard said, and that was all. He sat back with a dull thump onto his coffin, smiling to himself, as if amused by a private joke shared between himself and cruel, wicked fate. "Ohhh."

"If you two are quite finished," Walter put in a second later, annoyed and a bit concerned. Heaving a sigh, the elderly butler glared at the two as if they were more or less like quarreling brothers. "We're nearly there."

---------

Meanwhile, Seras Victoria bumped into Integra in the corridors. She swallowed heavily as she looked at her, beginning to see dark circles under her eyes, a halo of smoke around her head as she struggled through what was very clearly a hangover.

"Sir," she wondered, noticing how Integra turned her head to avoid her eyes. "You look awful..."

"You should watch what you say," Integra Hellsing muttered under her breath. She smiled crookedly at the Draculina with a small laugh.

"What happened? You were fine before bed," Seras said, choosing to ignore the sting of shame as Integra's words bit into her sensitivities.

"I think maybe I'm just fighting a losing battle," the older woman replied, giving Seras a rare insight to what her master's Master was thinking. Integra leaned against the wall and touched her mouth as if trying to remember a kiss that lingered at the vestiges of memory.

"Don't worry," Seras said, grinning ear to ear. She saluted. "Alucard - er, master - and I will make sure nothing ever happens to you or anyone else! London will be rebuilt! There'll be ice cream trucks again!"

_That was a little random_, Integra thought to herself, grinning. "Seras..."

"H-Huh!?"

"Don't ever lose that shine of yours. If it weren't for you, always confident and happy, I... I think this place should become very drab and unhappy." Her touch floated toward Seras's cheek, and left it there, comforting and warm and very human. For a moment, Seras could understand why Alucard liked her. It was a weird feeling, being touched so like this. All in all, she felt honored that Integra could confide in her when the boys were away.

"None of us like seeing you so unhappy," she gushed, blushing in her cheeks as she hunched up her shoulders. "I personally think you should take it easy. I know you keep telling us that Hellsing doesn't barter vacation time but... isn't it time for us to have a little time off? Even ass-kicking vampire hunters need a break once in awhile!"

"Indeed." Integra continued to grin a little longer. But in her heart, there was no doubt that a vacation would be betraying what was left of the population of England. How could she ever explain to the Queen that the Hellsing organization "needed a break" and would be back after such-and-such number of days?

Bloody hell. She was a slave just as Alucard was. "It's a nice thought," Integra murmured, exhaling a cloud of bitter smoke. "But I don't think it's a reasonable adjustment to our mental well-being. Better that we go mad doing our duty than going mad with guilt for turning our backs. We serve the people, remember? The people, the Queen and God."

Seras nodded solemnly. With some effort, she changed the subject, walking with her as Integra traveled to her bedroom door. "Ma'am, Alucard has been acting strange lately, I know."

"He has always been 'acting strange'."

"But stranger than usual. Like that man who says he's from the future... they do look an awful bit alike. I don't understand anything anymore. Maybe he's in love with him." The thought sent a bead of sweat rolling down her temple. "Wow, that would be... eh, heh..."

"No. He does not love him."

"How can you--"

Integra looked at her door, remembering the sensation of arms around her, of a mouth as hard and cold as ice melting against hers. She touched her mouth again. Seras blushed, looking away and whistling harmlessly.

"I just know it," the woman replied, and shared a private glance with Seras. They silently agreed never to speak it out loud, lest the words shatter the hope that it was true.

---------

Alucard flung his hat into the corner of the large, barely-furnished room. "Master. The girl was a vampire named Dorian Grey."

"Him?" Her eyes widened, her spoon half-risen to her mouth. "Was he eliminated?"

"God rest his soul," Alucard muttered, sinking into a chair across from her. The clock against the wall called the hour. Integra ate her soup; it was well past bed, but she never slept at this hour anyway. "Our quiet guest is bathing now. He fell into the Thames and came out soaking wet."

"Did he catch cold?" she smirked, pushing her empty bowl away once she had sipped the last droplets of her chicken noodle. She wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin, coughed once, before gazing beseechingly at her vampire. "About... last night."

Bloodshot eyes twisted in their sockets to gaze at her from black-rimmed, lidded eyes. "You don't ever have to apologize to me. You're expected to act the fool under pressure. It doesn't lessen my opinion of you one iota."

"That's right," Integra agreed softly. "I suppose I was not really in my right mind at all. How careless of me."

A shadow fell on her without a sound. She looked up at Alucard's silhouette in the lights. A single fingertip brushed over her forehead and remained there for some time, as if reading a temperature. "Little warm." He swept her up from her chair to the sound of her broken gasping. An irritated wrinkle formed on her brow, mouth slightly gaping.

"Alucard, you let go of me- A-Aah..." His lips felt wonderfully cool on her cheek. Her eyes steadily drooped before closing, her body relaxing against his broad, muscled chest. He felt exquisite to rest against. It conjured memories of last night and, unbidden, nights before when she had kept her nightmares to herself with Alucard's ear to listen. Soft, practiced fingertips worked their way beneath her jacket, to the soft white, freshly-pressed shirt underneath. Even through that fabric and his gloves, she could feel the delicious cold that was a balm to her feverish skin. Her anger disintegrated in seconds, though she was loathe to admit that she had already given herself up to his uncharacteristic show of kindness.

"I understand why he's here now." Alucard's lips twisted into that all-familiar smile that cracked his face nearly in half. "I understand it all fully. But you don't have to be afraid for me, beloved master. Nothing will keep me from you." He remembered Dorian, how the inhuman trash had begged for death and complained of the kind of world-weariness that Alucard had long gotten accustomed to. He was ever more determined to fight and perhaps die proudly for his master.

"Command me," he begged her softly. "Command me to destroy him. Point me to the battlefield where we will duel."

"I... Alucard. I can't." She raised her sleepy eyes to his feverish ones. It seemed a demon had crawled into his skin and possessed him.

"Let me hear your commands!" he shouted, pushing her at arms length. He dropped to one knee and seized her hands, squeezing them so hard that her knuckles popped.

"Alucard!" Integra's eyes widened, trembling with terror and elation. "Destroy him, but don't you hold back on him! Let loose everything you have to offer on that bastard dhampir and send his soul to purgatory!"


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Notes: **I like broccoli. Oh, my fanfic? Yeah, it's almost done. Thank you everyone for your consideration and your kind words!! I'll consider an epilogue maybe some other time.

**"Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**TAKE 9 : **When Angels Cry (FINALE)

A mouse with eyes like tiny pepper corns scurried underneath the freshly fallen layer of snow. The undisturbed, rolling hills of farmland were blanketed and silent; formless lumps of abandoned hay bales were cast around the. Ravens pecking at the remnants of dead (or dying) things roosted in the trees, trembling with gossamer-black feathers ruffled thickly about their bodies. The scavengers of the sky grimly bore witness to the figures advancing to the empty field. The moon was high, the devil's horns pointing skyward. A wall of black trunks belonging to decade-old trees flourished at the end of the field, enroaching on the farmland after the farmers abandoned it to the elements. A farmhouse with windows painted black leaned over on its foundations in the darkness. Its paint peeling, its porch ravaged to nothing but cinderblocks and wild vines creeping along the stones.

Alucard walked at the end of the world, letting the calculating coldness of the stars mindlessly pour light onto his skin, illuminating his eyes that shined like the devil's. His boots did not leave footprints in the snow. No one would know that two men had come this way; and none would uncover that only one left. No one knew for sure whether there were still yet more countless dead crushed underneath a decade of mud and rain and filth. Perhaps he was walking in a graveyard, unpurified by the blessing of God. The perfect, final resting place. It was his wish, his burning to desire, baptise the ground in the blood of immortals in the unholy ceremony of battle.

He wished hard that it was not so quiet. The devil wearing black walked beside him, head bent against the chill to maintain the ill-wrought illusion that he could actually feel cold. He was dry and clean and perfect, holding his power around him as if he didn't even know it was there. His ignorance was a frustrating, niggling insect in Alucard's ear. Any mere human would fall at his feet begging a favorable glance in their direction. It was a wonder his beloved master had not fallen under his spell. Avoiding him, he decided, had been a preemptive approach on her part.

That power. The count had no need to squint to see it. It was there, coiling and uncoiling around him like black, blood-drenched banners. Like hooded serpents, so beautiful to look at but deadly to get close to.

Unbidden, the dhampir caught his gaze, and he studied him with eyes that were enviable by the count's kind whose only gaze was the terrifying vermillion of their ancestors. "We don't have to do this."

Alucard gave a hearty, thick laughter that seemed to resonate from Hell. "You are bound somehow by something you do not understand. Vampires must die by your blade, while their existence yet haunts your every waking and sleeping moments. You'll see me dead long before you crawl back into that fucking coffin of yours to rot away."

D matched his stare, held until the coldness disappeared between the heat hissing between them. Then, surprisingly, D smiled. It was like watching a night flower bloom, every drop of moonlight infused into that gorgeous, unparalleled beauty. Alucard was suddenly, violently in love with him and, in the same breath, so full of hate that his eyes bled.

His ears buzzed when he heard him speak, "Fine," and they squared off in the midnight cold.

Vermillion oculars flared with savage delight at the ring of sword on scabbard. Cold, calculating crystalline sparked against the figure bathed in red. The thrumming vitality even beneath the ground seemed to be sucked away, deadening the sound of D's very slow, almost indiscernable breathing. The slight vapor from his nose disappeared an instant later with the rest of him.

In a millisecond, barely measurable by human standards, the vampire Alucard gave the sky a cursory glance before he spun around, firing a shot into empty air vacated by D's body. Alucard spat blood into the snow. D reappeared a short distance away, his blade coated with blood.

"How?" Alucard laughed, the pain wracking his body like a welcome explosion warming up his senses for the agony to follow. So fast, D's movements were difficult to follow. Difficult; not impossible. His battle with the Nazi dogs sent by the lovely and corpulent Major gave him all the practice he needed to remember his strength. His upper body straightened, the impalement wound healing slowly, filling up with blood that looked black in the moon.

The baleful gaze of the dhampir hunter bled into his concentration. His lips moved slightly, as if speaking a single word, before he bounded skyward again. Alucard opened his arms wide and took to the sky with him, using Casull and Jackal, crossing them together to catch the blade between them. Beautiful hot sparks flew; their eyes caught seemed to catch on fire, rubies against the ocean. That irredeemable smile remained firmly in place, complimenting the utter blank stare from his adversary. They stayed airborne, locked in place for four seconds, D throwing with all of the downward momentum he could muster into that godly weapon.

With a monumentous effort, Jackal inched its crosshair shakily onto the swordsman's shoulder. Surprisingly hot, gushing blood spattered into his face, raw bone and sinew exposed to the wintry air - the steaming was not due to the temperature but for the stink of charred flesh.

Weightless, with a grimace of pain tightening his mouth and the corners of his eyes, D flew away again, and Alucard followed his path away from him with black and white crosshairs trained on D. Sparks flashed as D whacked bullets away with a high-pitched squeal back at his enemy with the flat of his blade. Most of them flew wild, hiding themselves in the snow beyond the Midian's line of sight. Then Alucard heard the chunky, wet 'thukk' of a bullet hitting flesh. He landed on the ground with a hint of a stumble. A bright patch of blood squirted crimson into the snow, a shaky signature in blood against virgin white.

D's landed in a shower of displaced snow. He artlessly switched hands to the right, and then surprisingly sheathed his sword with the sheath at his side. "I won't let you reload your ammunition."

"Just as I won't let you get that pretty blade sullied with my blood. That won't stop you from trying." Alucard lifted one corner of his mouth. "You've been counting my shots? Are you _sure_ I'm out?"

"Maybe."

Alucard bared his teeth, sliding his tongue out to lick the blood dripping close to his lip. "Stop wasting my time, boy. Show me that power of yours - the power of your father, Dracula. I want to feel it ripping my flesh to ribbons!"

"My father..." D's eyes quickened with emotion suddenly.

Alucard attacked, sped across the snow until he was nearly abreast of his foe, abandoning his Casull for his bare hand. His left hand angled itself to drive through that black breast, ignoring the fiery sting of a sword through his throat, severing his head from the rest of his body. The last satisfaction he had was feeling the cloth break and the skin burst like a well-ripened fruit, cascading blood into his sleeve and down the beautiful youth's chest. The snow quickly became slightly ruddy with scarlet.

Alucard's head still sat precariously on his severed neck. The wound healed itself, carmine fluid rushing back to his body with a sickening, gutteral sucking noise. He still had the same crooked, infuriating smile pasted on his cherry-speckled face.

"I see... that I must convince you."

D raised his sword; Alucard caught the hand that held it, squeezing tightly.

The dhampir groaned with pain, feeling cold, heartless fingers worming into his chest. Blood poured from his lips and nose. "S-st...stop..."

"You should be dead by now," Alucard mused, twisting his hand further. The tremor in the dhampir's legs proved that he was not impervious to the pain inflicted now on his body. His left arm hung at his side, dripping blood from slack fingers originating from the pulsing, bone-shattered hole in his shoulder. "I hereby classify you as a new type of vampire, potentially more lethal than Class A." The words made utterly no sense to D at all.

The dhampir's vision blurred slowly to red, feeling his own heart twisting and quivering inside his chest. The pounding inside his ears had nothing to do with blood vessels.

_"Releasing Art Restriction to Level Zero-- what?!"_

The snowscape around them bent, contorting into a funnel. It was sucked away into some indiscernable point, as their surroundings had brushed dangerously close to an event horizon. The two figures remained where they were. There was absolutely no sound, not even the sound of dripping blood. A violent wind cracked their jackets back and forth like black and red sails. The undying darkness, depthless and formless and unending would have given a normal human a violence sense of vertigo. As it was, Alucard was fairly certain this was not the result of releasing his art restrictions on D.

D crumpled in on himself. While he seemed suspended on solid nothing, his blood fell for half a minute before the droplets broke apart noiselessly on something solid further below - or was it above? Alucard thought, staring in wonder.

"What the hell is this place?" he whispered, afraid to break the unnatural quiet, narrowing his eyes at D's crumpled, still body.

Then the Count began to hear discordant, watery voices. His searched around him for any sign of change; all he could discern was the impression of movement, like the flow of the air around his body. The voices poked through the silence occasionally, needling past the crushing nothing around them. Finally, sound rushed in; the darkness was washed away in the watercolor fade of time.

Muted columns of stone rose into shadows that were more familiar to vampire eyes. The footsteps and laughter were loud and clear now. Alucard saw three figures walking toward him between the giant columns whose sconces flickered with an everlasting brilliance. The women walking down the halls were dressed in a decadent manner, a study in the flesh with chests hardly covered at all. Barefoot and pale-skinned with varying degrees of immortal loveliness, they stopped, ignoring Alucard completely.

A fanged beauty with brown, streaming hair tittered, "Ah, trust it to the Count to throw such a ball! 'Scantily clad,' the invitation said. All those beautiful mortals..."

"But where is our beloved host?" the blonde temptress added in a sultry undertone. "How we would like to pay our respects to our great and omniscient lord."

A small figure stirred out of the corner of Alucard's vision. The females noticed it as well.

"You there!"

"Yes, you. We can see you plain, fool, come on!"

A young person stepped into the light. The boy's eyes were as if they were poured from the paint wells of a deity, the color of the bright afternoon sky - such a blue that took the ladies' breath away. He gazed calmly albeit it nervously back at them from a face carved from porcelaine, cheeks flushed red with embarassment. It was the most beautiful child any of them had ever seen; they swooned and fell to their knees, crawling toward him to get a better look from his height.

"Ohh," the blonde crooned, reaching to touch the boy's dark brown hair. "So beautiful..."

"Must be a tiny left-over from the ball," the brunette whispered.

"Let's have him," the black-haired lady suggested. "Just to ourselves. Just we three; we'll share, each have a taste, until he's all gone."

The child stepped backward, hand reaching for the sturdiness of the column he was hiding behind, eyes slowly growing wider.

"_Get away from me_."

The women froze, quailing at the tone of the little one's voice, so bold and full of power.

"How dare you," one hissed, recovering more quickly than the others. "Well, we were willing to make it nice for you, boy. Now you'll suffer!"

In seconds they were upon him; the boy struggled, but as he was he was far too weak, and a tiny pale white white throat was exposed. He quivered, his jaw clenched from screaming - or sobbing. But his expression was curiously empty, eyes thrown behind a curtain of dark, gleaming hair. In a few seconds they would start to drain him of his life.

During this, Alucard had quietly prepared another loaded clip for Casull, before moving to join the fray. However, he had forgotten about something important. The gloved, black hand around his wrist made him check his step. D was kneeling on the floor and breathing better now, but where his eyes were focused he didn't know.

Alucard understood his motives in a moment. While he had glanced away, a fifth player was added to the stage and Alucard naught but an observer. Regardless of whether D had stopped him or not, Alucard probably would have just wasted his ammunition. The women were petrified with fear; the fifth presence was not a face or a name, but the growing darkness, a multitude of unblinking, glaring red eyes. It swelled like a plague, all jagged edges and razor-sharp teeth as it closed in on the four figures on the floor.

Without even a warning, the immensely powerful vampire fell upon the women and tore them apart. Their screams were swallowed as their throats were gouged open, their vital red fluid never reaching the floor; it simply collected itself in the center of the blackness, destroying them. What was left of the women, after the chaos subsided, were tattered bodies, all of them crawling over each other to get away.

"Cowards," the vampire lord, reforming himself slowly. "Run away. Back to your weakened, inbred little brood. Flee into the holes you crawled from!"

The count's head was shrouded. As if the boy was not even there, he turned away, staring toward the spiralling stairway where a group of other monsters had formed. Without looking, he spoke to the trembling boy on the floor. "You were to stay in your room."

The boy lowered his head, vastly unharmed. He stood up slowly, smoothing his white shirt. "Father."

"Never call me that!" the vampire king snarled, backhanding the child into the stone marble column. There the boy crumpled, tight-lipped. The cut on his cheek healed on its own before Alucard's eyes.

Alucard relaxed his shoulders after he noticed the colors around his vision were blurring. The vision was melting, and then gone. D let go of Alucard's wrist a second after the last color was sapped by the flow of time.

"The past?" he demanded. "Was that the past?"

"It is your future. It is already long past for me." D's eyes went hazy. "Was I really so small then?"

"It shouldn't matter," Alucard replied with chilling emptiness. "We have a battle to finish. I think you've recovered. Let's start our dance again!"

D sighed, pursed his lips, before raising his sword, his head back to look at Alucard. "We can't fight here. Or at least we shouldn't. We don't know what could happen, and we should be more worried about getting back."

"You're concern is touching," Alucard replied, "but wholly unnecessary. I'll place a bet on the theory that this purgatory will end as soon as one of us dies. As you said, this hell only springs up around us when you and I are together."

"Death doesn't guarantee anything," D answered back tightly. He lifted the bright sword, flicking blood from its point. "But if that is all that entertains you now, I'll indulge."

Alucard turned his reloaded weapon on D, but found that no matter how much he wanted to fill his beautiful, damned body with bullets, there was nothing but hesitation. His lip was curled savagely enough to scare a cannibal into pissing himself, but the mean of his emotions boiled down to pity. That boy in the vision. To spite his lack of paternal affection - and God knows what befell his mother - this man named D had turned out the way he was now, a proud and unspoiled hunter, wearing his badge of innocence like it was a spoil of childhood.

Suddenly the space outside of time shuddered again, and Alucard looked around himself, stepping closer to D simply out of a need to find a point of reference to ground himself. "Again. What will it show us this time?"

There was a strange cracking sound. Then, as the colors dripped into focus, Alucard holstered his weapon, listening to D sheath his sword as they again observed a scene unfold. The cracking became clearer and more definitive as the sound of a whip on flesh.

A slightly older boy was secured to a metal cross on a wall. His flesh was red and raw from touching giant iron crucifix, as if brushing against it burned away layers of skin. There was another painful alternative - leaning away from the cross to recieve the lashes raining down upon his chest. Thick, dark and damp hair fell across his startlingly luminscent eyes which shined even from the shadows. The odd thing was that the boy hardly uttered a cry. Just a hoarse, quick breath of pain at each lashing, his flesh laid open and bare and then healing slowly even as the next one fell. The boy looked exhausted.

The one delivering his torment was a monster in a shroud who very obviously took pleasure in dealing out punishment. He seemed intent on carving the meat right off the boy's ribs, but no matter how many times, the wounds would seal over in a matter of seconds. A thin layering of scarlet covered his skin. The dungeon was rank and full of filth and stank of excrement.

"It's all for your own good," the monster chortled. "The master wants you strong... and the only way you can get stronger is to never be afraid of pain. Pain's only good for lettin' you know you ain't dead yet!" Another blow fell.

The boy winced darkly, trembling slightly as his hands tightened into fists.

"He hates you, but he can never get rid o' ya! Yer all that's left of that bitch he said he loved so much! He takes pride in boastin' about how he fucked her raw. Never expected a little punk shit like you would come popping out, killin' her in the process! What rubbish! You're a sack of shit, and your daddy knows it!"

Every blow that fell equated to a lesson in agony and endurance. This purposeless torture otherwise did nothing but satisfy the monster's hunger and allow Dracula to fulfill a vengeance upon the boy for killing a woman who had meant so much more to him than life itself. Dracula gazed from across the room, as much as the sight of a crucifix irritated his eyes.

Gradually, each blow became more swift and vicious, rending open the precious immortal skin of the youth whose eyes quickened with fever and pain. He shut them, bowing his head, and bending his body as far as it would go away from the crucifix, whose longer-lasting anguish was not preferable. But the heavy rain of attacks on his flesh were becoming incessant and the laughter, the horrible, cackling madness--

"ENOUGH!" Alucard screamed, lunging toward the scene, reaching to tackle the cloaked monster to the ground. But he fell through and crashed to the floor, directly in front of the cross. He could gaze on it without discomfort as it was not necessarily real for him as it was real for the young, dark-haired youth.

He looked up, glaring aggravation filling his expression.

The boy's eyes were changing color. They were quivering orbs. The whip fell again and again. The boy stopped trying to move. His gaze turned a muddy violet, then outright crimson, his mouth coming open after keeping his cries of agony behind his fangs. His eyes flew open suddenly, and from his lips poured a tremendously horrifying scream. The shackles binding him to the enormous cross shattered. Alucard jerked backward; the boy fell.

Then, in a few seconds, the raging dhampir boy flew at his tormentor with the speed of a demon, snarling like an unleashed lion from its cage. He kicked with his knee at the cloaked figure's face, knocking the head clean from its vertebra, uncapping a spray of dark, black and unnatural blood from its torn ligaments. Unrestrained anguish and rage filled the boy's face as he gazed toward the indistinguishable character moving above the chamber on a balcony.

He screamed "Father!", but the figure disappeared, and the boy was alone with the haunting command.

_Go away from here, D. I can't bear to look at you anymore._

-------

"Do you understand? Do you understand now why I put myself in that coffin?" It was the voice of wind from the icy north, brisk and captivating. "I can't bear surviving outside of both circles. Neither can I fit myself into both of them at once. I can't be a monster and a victim simultaneously. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to find peace, and instead I find this place - and you. There is no single being in my world that can send me to that oblivion."

The Count Dracula, of the timeline of our Earth, pushed himself up from the floor. The scene had long since evaporated into time and memory. He may as well have been floating in thin air. His expression was deadpan, a mask of indifference bordering on a lethal case of apathy. He had been sitting down, covering his face and hiding from the scene, curling in on himself so that he could also hide from the memory of that dark, reprehensible creature - himself. Now he was upright, staring D flush in the face.

"You're the only one here that can fulfill this wish," D deadpanned, gazing back into his eyes. He stepped closer, leather creaking as he brushed his hat away and let it fall - it did not stop at their feet but continued to descend forever, on into the blackness. He ignored that; the dhampir continued and pressed his face against the lapels of Alucard's jacket. His face was wet. "Please. Aluca-- No. Dracula."

The name sounded sweet and strange and alien on his tongue, with all the right inflections of his homeland. It sent a funny pain into the count's chest. He smirked, grabbing D's shoulders and forcing him to rise. "Don't. I won't do anything, with you on your knees all pathetic like that. Do yourself some honor. Look me in the eyes."

D obeyed. When he did, Alucard pulled him near and brushed his mouth against his, slowly and curiously. The dhampir had looked stricken, as if everything he had ever done had drained out of him and he simply felt old.

"May I devour you?" Alucard said suddenly, pulling away.

"Why?"

"Why should I have to tell you? You're going to be dead anyway; what difference does it make how I do it, and for what reasons? All I ask is that you fight as if you give a damn!" The vampire snapped, closing his hand around D's throat. "_Releasing Art Restrictions to Level Zero..."_

The darkness swallowed them, a thickening frenzy as the multitudes of the dead spirits that Alucard had consumed filled the empty spaces between the corridors of time. The bright flash of a sword flickered like the waning light of a burning candle, twisting and writhing in the wind.

------

The snow squealed beneath the tires of the minivan. Soon, a pair of well-blackened boots cracked through the hard shell of snow on top, and crunched their way a few paces. White slacks taut with a second layer underneath to ward off the biting wind whipping the snow into a froth crinkled as the figure half-ran, half-stumbled into the distance. A white long jacket, and two swords buckled to feminine hips flapped back and forth. Integra's hair came loose from inside her hat and went streaming behind her.

There was a thunderous crack, as if something had broken the sound-barrier, and a sickening nausea quickly and harmlessly passed over her. She was already sick at heart. Seconds ago she had heard signs of battle and could not sit by like a typical woman waiting to survey the aftermath. She had ran to the snowfield, half-expecting to view the battle.

However, there was one little problem. There was no one in sight. It was still. The fading rumbles became distorted and then disappeared altogether. Then, half a heartbeat later, the sound crashed again. A few feet above the ground, a blood-drenched figure crashed to the snow with a muffled thump.

Regardless of who this was, in spite of not knowing just what the hell had just transpired, Integra nearly landed on top of the battle-torn individual. There was no red coat, no guns, and no sword on his person; his black hair fanned out around him in a reckless heap, sticky with gore when she tried to brush it into one again.

She cursed under her breath; hot, angry and admittedly terrified tears streamed down her face. She listened to Walter as he came after her. Seras was a bit faster on the mark, dashing toward them, shrieking in fear, "Master?!"

"Is he...?"

The man stirred, rolled over. A rattling cough produced a wad of blood and sputum. He looked up at the sky with its horned moon, as if he had never seen it before in his long life. Black tears streamed along the lines in his face. He gazed with red eyes, his mouth twisting into the ever-familiar sneer of pleasure.

He whispered, "I've never seen... such a beautiful night... my master."

**THE END**


	10. Epilogue

**Author's Notes: **This is an epilogue. An epilogue for a story. A story that can't seem to end. Why won't you let me put this story down, Alucard?

**"Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER**

**EPILOGUE: **Mephistopheles

The bath water smelled like chamomile and rosehips. His pale chest was still as he settled himself into the soaking liquid, hardly bothered by the water as the spells scraped into his flesh by Arthur Hellsing glowed in a faded manner. His long fingers loosely hung over the edge of the white porcelaine, his head back while Integra knelt behind him wearing her white blouse. Her glasses were fogging in the steam, laid aside so she could see him, while she poured the water from a stainless steel pitcher over his head. The gore came away in little brown rivulets, but the water cleared somehow as he drew it into himself. Hair plastered itself over his shoulders like ink. She repeated the process until he laid his head back against the edge, eyes opening to stare blankly through the steam rising from his skin.

Several empty blood packets littered the floor to the left of the tub, savagely torn into and sucked dry of their contents as if an animal had gotten to them.

"Nice..." he purred, moving his left hand to stir the water lazily. Petals bobbed and swirled around him. Naked in the warmth of a perfect hot bath, the vampire looked at Intregra's face.

He was never so acutely aware of her beauty until he saw the worry masked behind a face she seemed tired of wearing. His lady knight of God looked so old. It made her even more precious. His vision blurred, and it must have startled her because she quickly moved to splash water over his cheeks.

"Alucard," she began to say, seeing red brimming at the edges of his eyes. "Will you tell me what the hell happened?"

"We had a row," Alucard smiled, rubbing at his eyes. "Do my tears make you unhappy?"

Integra lifted her mouth in a small smile. "I'm just a little alarmed. This is really unlike you."

Alucard dropped his hands into the water again, grinning like a jester sharing his own private joke. "That boy," he said. "We fought, he and I. We disappeared, right? I don't know for how long. You see, we had been vanishing to a place somewhere outside of the stream of time. I know it's difficult for you to believe, but how can you explain how he came from the future?"

"I believe you, Alucard," she replied, reaching for a pine green wash cloth. She doused it in water before lathering it with soap. "I already told you that. So tell me, when you and him went outside of time..."

"I unleashed all of my power on him. Master, may I have more water?"

Integra's eyes shined. She silently poured more over his body, began to wash his body carefully, rubbing the cloth over his chest and neck, reaching her arms around him. The aromatic scent filled her nose, eliminating the scent of blood.

Alucard continued after a moment, head back back. "How can I say how long when there was no way to measure the passage of time? But my minions. One by one, he cut them down, sometimes three, or four, or even five at a time. It was the most marvelous thing I had ever seen. He was... absolutely tireless. Flawless. I tore and ripped at him, but he came toward me, determined to meet his death by me. Me!" Alucard laughed and it bounced malignantly off the walls. "One man against an army of me. The war might have been waged for days, for all I know. But I understand that it took only a second before I appeared again, isn't that right?" He grinned at the little pun, moving on rapidly as he talked at the water more than Integra. "So much happened, all at once. He was holding back that entire time, just for me. Then at the end, his familiars revealed themselves to me."

"Familiars?" Integra arched a brow dubiously. "What?"

"I saw him as he truly was." The vampire's eyes turned inward as he recollected the vision. "Magnificent. Absolutely breath-taking. Like a great, dark angel from Heaven. He had wings, master! And all of Heaven's wrath seemed to come falling toward me and I welcomed the challenge with open arms!"

"But you defeated him, surely?"

"I did." At this, Alucard's eyes fell. He sat up carefully, yawned once, and rubbed his temples. "I devoured him with his blessing. He wanted to die, Master... Just like that fool Dorian Grey. Ha, ha, but he should never be compared to that whelp!"

Integra looked on, rubbing the cloth into his back, over his broad shoulders. His skin was a marvel, like the perfect marble filling the manor's corridors. There were no scars to show that he had fought valiantly against his predestined foe. She wished he had not moved so she could better see the expression on his face. He was a difficult, deep book to read. "Damn you, Alucard," she muttered, clenching her fingers on the cloth. Soap suds squeezed out along his skin. "You wanted him to kill you so you could die like a bloody fucking hero."

"True enough." He rubbed his chin, unenthused.

"You're so selfish!"

"As always!" Alucard turned to stare at her with his smile.

Integra growled, tossing the cloth into the water with a splash. "You never stopped to think whether the Hellsing Organization would suffer without you!"

"It suffers with me!" he sat up, water pouring from his sides as he got to his knees, leaning on the edge of the bath to glare at her. "After all, I did not exactly twist your arm out of its socket to seek my glory! It was not enough to be the lone warrior of Hellsing! Their black knight!"

Fury suited her just fine, Alucard decided. She clenched her fist to hit him, but decided that it was better not to. Forgoing all thought of consequence, she grabbed his jaw and pulled him roughly, hissing against his damn little grin. "You are _my_ knight, Alucard, and you always will be; without regard, without bloody foresight-- reckless bastard-- do you have any_ idea_--"

Alucard waited, fixing his eyes on her face until the anger she had summoned up as her armor against human weakness. It cracked and tumbled away, her knuckles white on his shoulders. "Bastard-- you don't have any _idea_--" Tears followed the dimples in her face down her cheeks. He pulled her close to the edge, covered in soap, and kissed her face. Wretched little sounds of directionless anguish bounced from wall to wall.

_So tender, and precious. Little mortal woman. It must be your turn to weep again_. The vampire's eyes softened greatly, feeling her shoulders tremble and her breast shudder against his. "I c-can't," she growled, taking up arms again, glaring at his neck. "I can't endure that again. Don't you dare attempt to seek your own death because it will be the death of _me_."

Alucard said her name and made her look up in slight surprise. "Rinse," he purred, sliding back into the water, his hair slightly dried. She poured a pitcher of water over him again, a soft flush tinging her cheeks. "Am I pleasing, master? You've never seen me quite so, isn't that right?"

The tone was half-teasing, half-demure. Integra wrinkled her nose, placing the pitcher on the edge of the porcelain bath as she stood up and stretched, her shirt raised to show her navel. It caught his attention and stirred his blood, and it was his turn to blush.

"Not as pleasing as I am to you," Integra noted coolly, frosty amusement glittering in her eyes. How quickly her emotions doth change! "Stay." Alucard sank into the water, playing with one of the petals, drowning in the scent of the water and soap and the faint aroma of her perfume left behind. She disappeared from sight. There was a Japanese screen to one side. She stepped beyond it, reached her arms above her head, and dropped the blouse on the tiles where he could see it by her shoes. She pushed those off her heels and brushed them aside.

In about a minute she showed herself again, eyes gleaming, a soft white bathrobe draped around her. At her approach, Alucard reopened his eyes and nearly jumped out of his skin. "Master..."

She derobed, sliding one slender leg over the edge, then the other. Alucard slid backward and watched her move, half-mesmerized. Then he pulled a small smile; she responded in kind, settling into the water and moving to move the water up over her neck, sighing, exulting in the heat that eased her muscles.

"Why, master--"

"Shut up, Alucard."

His lips quirked slightly into a crooked smirk. She quietly twined her legs with his, as this was not a situation arranged for two to fit into. Even in hot water, his skin felt cooler than everything else. She stared across the steam rising from the water into her vampire's eyes, long golden hair floating around her. It was a buffet of skin to feast his eyes on, but he could devour her in other ways than simply looking. With nary a squeak of porcelaine he covered the short distance and pressed his mouth to her throat just beneath her jaw, pressing his lips to her skin until he felt her hands rest on his shoulders, then her arms loosely hang about his neck, pressing him closer.

"Promise me," she said into his ear. "You'll stay by my side, not because you are cursed but blessed."

"I _am_ blessed, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing."

"I love you, Alucard."

He grunted slightly at that. She tightened her hold on him, kissing his hair, his cheeks, his face, until she bumped her lips against his and pressed harder, more fervently, a passionate affair indeed. The vampire did not necessarily discourage the effort; he pushed his tongue past her lips, into her mouth, feeling her warm mouth tighten and pull on it with unyielding hunger. His wet, dark hair clung to her face; likewise, her hair was sticking to his sides. She breathed life into his mouth with the tiniest of moans and he relinquished his hold over her, letting her recover.

"Not for you. Not now," he crooned, stroking her hair into order. "My beloved master. Let me get dressed and we'll put you to sleep with tea."

"Don't coddle me," she growled, flustered as much as any virgin.

Alucard stretched as he stood outside the bath, arms raised high above his head, flawless immortality carved out of the ravages of time. Integra dried herself with her bath towel, steam rising from her pink skin.

Alucard drew his pants up over his legs, letting them hang on his hips. He wondered awhile at the words spoken in the past, and his role as the observer of D's past - and his future, it seemed. Or one future. Who was to say that Alucard would become the kind of tyrant over his own child? And here, vampires were said to be barren, childless. Was it just a coincidence that D had come here, to see him in particular?

Foolishness. Walter delivered him new clothes, washed, and mourned the loss of his beloved Casull and Jackal, before promising that even better side arms would be made for the vampire. The butler's monocle gleamed suspiciously at the state of Integra, whose hair was damp and skin flushed. Her stately appearance was cast off, glasses fogging slightly as they sat precariously on her nose.

As Integra shuffled off to bed wearing a pair of brown leather slippers, Alucard reclined against the wall. It was fortuitous chance that Walter was here. He felt as if he had not seen him in a millennia and yet the old creature had not changed at all.

"Shinigami," Alucard called him.

"Alucard, sir?"

"That journeying vampire hunter from the future... said he had a gift for you."

"A... gift, sir?" Walter quirked an eyebrow, hands folded kindly behind his back. Only Alucard could truly say what kind of character he was. He had flitted like a moth into time and space during his battles with D, and although he was paying more close attention to the swordwielding dhampir, he had seen and heard quite a bit. In another time, perhaps, Walter was a traitor; he did not know exactly what reasons pushed that time-period's Walter.

But the insight was intriguing to say the least.

"There was a blue jewel in my clothes; please put it somewhere safe, the Manor treasure room perhaps."

The battle: when they had been close enough to see the ethereal light of eternity gleam in each other's eyes, Alucard lunged to grab the jewel with his teeth, breaking the chain with his teeth. As it fell, he snatched it out of the air before it was lost to the gaping darkness around them. D did not begrudge him the sudden chance in ownership.

"Please tell Inte-- ah, master -- not to be alarmed. While it's still dark, I'd like to go out for a bit. There's something I left behind."

Walter called after him, slightly alarmed. "Whatever could you have left behind? There was nothing, master Alucard!"

Alucard hurried along, taking to lightening sky and finding the empty field which was still peppered with blood. His feet crunched the hardened snow beneath his feet. He stood in the midst of blood frozen solid, crimson-hued eyes looking here and there as if he were a man who had dropped his wallet in his obscure place. From underneath a layer of churned-up snow near the place where he had popped back out of time like a cork from the pressure, there was a small but distinguishable muffled groan.

The vampire stepped toward the snow, using his boot to brush it aside. A tiny brown mouse looked up with black eyes like tiny pepper corns, gleaming with intelligence and sizzling with outrage. The familiar voice erupted from in between the mouse's squeaks, walking around in a circle to warm itself up.

"Took you long enough to find me! I was starting to think I'd freeze to death out here!"

"How did you manage to get back?"

"You think I was gonna hang around? When the ship's sinking, a rat's got to jump ship, eh?" The "mouse" grinned widely, so widely that it seemed to stretch the furry mammal's face obscenely.

"Or a mouse, in your case." Alucard returned the grin, crouching down and offering his palm as a lift. The mouse crawled on, shook itself once, before blinking up at Alucard with twitching whiskers. "I suppose you'll be coming home with me, whatever you are."

"I'm a parasite. I'm not really hurtin' this little guy, just hitching a ride until a better host comes along. For now, I think I'll stay here - it's not too conspicuous unless I happen to scurry across your master's dinner table." When the mouse was placed into his breast pocket, he stuck his nose out. "Hey, this is nice - first class! Sure am going to miss that dhampir bastard, though. Hope to hell he was worth it. Was he tasty?"

"You talk too much. I should squash you, really. But you, my little furry friend, are too interesting. I'll want to hear all about you and how you came to be attached to his hand like that."

"Well," the mouse chuckled anxiously, "it's kinda embarassing, really. But--"

The red-coated figure walked back to the edge of the field, unable to fly lest he harm his new companion. The voice of the parasite echoed across the snow, growing softer as they walked away. Alucard was sure that tomorrow night would be a singularly grand one; he would surely look forward to many more to come.


End file.
